


think with your head (not that thing in your chest)

by gravityinglass



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fic, Gen, HBB 2019, Hockey Big Bang 2019, M/M, Space Opera, the alternate title for this fic is 'nazem kadri needs a nap'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-03 10:03:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: Naz is a former smuggler; John is an assassin. On a mission for the Republic of United Systems, they bring aboard one Mitch Marner, who carries secrets none of them expect. Onboard the ship Hiraeth, decisions must be made that will alter the fate of the galaxy.





	1. PORT: MELBIA, SYKKIN

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Marce for helping me work out the original outline; thanks to Finny for helping me with the very inception of the Hiraeth; thanks to G for the readover and scifi tips; thanks to Eldy for the beta!
> 
> There is a glossary as the final chapter of this fic if you’re curious about character affiliations or words used within the fic, but it does contain some spoilers, so I don’t recommend reading it first.

> ⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: MELBIA, SYKKIN**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

When John got back, Naz was bickering with a customer.

“Dunno what to tell you,” Naz was saying. “They’re from Terra Prime, man.”

The woman looked unconvinced. “They don’t look quite right.”

John decided not to interrupt, not when Naz was starting to look pissed off. He wandered into the _Hiraeth _through the cargo bay and wound through the narrow corridors to the common area.

The cargo bay was mostly unloaded; it was strange to be able to walk through without having to maneuver around tightly-packed cases and crates or having to go around to _ Hiraeth _’s actual entrance. He stopped to check on the hold’s hydroponics sector--there were crates there, so Naz had gotten some of the upgrade parts he’d wanted, good-- and then climbed the ladder up to the inhabitable areas of the ship.

The _Hiraeth _wasn’t exactly small, but she wasn’t a huge ship, either. John found his favorite spot in the room that served as a living and dining room, with the kitchen tucked along the side. Jazzy, their black and white ships’ cat, climbed into his lap and purred, demanding attention. John gladly acquiesced, rubbing her ears gently. He wasn’t there long before Naz wandered in.

“Bad day?”

Naz shook his head and kissed John hello, giving Jazzy along her back. “Fucking _Tierrans,_ man. They’ll take diamonds from Luxis and weaponry from Caxi no problem but god forbid their _ chocolate bars _ aren’t from Terra Prime.”

“Those _ were _from Terra Prime, right?”

Naz rolled his eyes. “Yes, law enforcement lover mine. How was your government-sanctioned murder today?”

“Might want to take on passengers and get out,” John said, watching as Naz pulled his ledger out of the storage cupboard by the cockpit. He had one on his holonet and John had a backup copy on his civilian holonet as well, but Naz was alarmingly old fashioned in a lot of ways and liked having physical records. In fact, John knew he kept two ledgers: one for official business and one for under-the-table business. “It’ll all start falling apart in about thirty solar hours.”

“That’s a planetary day?”

“Little less.” John shrugged as Naz rolled his eyes. “I know it’s not a lot of time but it’s all the warning I can give.”

Naz hummed and set the ledger on the table. “We’ve offloaded all the Tierran goods we’re going to, and it’s not difficult to get a hold full of plaesiya within a solar day here. You need to work, or could you process passengers?”

“I’ve got a couple of hours, and it’ll help to have cover.” John kicked back in his chair. Jazzy mrowed, clearly annoyed that her seat was moving, and flounced off his lap to inspect her food bowl. “What’re our ports of call?”

“The furthest points away from whatever chaos you’ve caused here.”

“Taabi,” John said. “Then Terra Beta, maybe.”

“That’s not actually all that far,” Naz said but started scribbling out course projections in the ledger. “I’ll register our next port of call as Taabi, and start working on getting plaesiya. Maybe some srspns. Those always go over well on Taabi, with a decent markup.”

“You still can’t pronounce that.”

“What, srspns? I can’t properly pronounce anything without vowels, John.”

John gave his husband an incredulous look. “You grew up on a language station.”

“Yeah, and we had _vowels_. A E I O U and sometimes Y, John.”

John rolled his eyes and kissed Naz before settling in with his tablet to write up a notice for the transit board.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

The _ Hiraeth _was a Chevrolet-make transport class ship that Naz had picked up in his early smuggler days. It could and did run on a skeleton crew of two, with space for up to fourteen passengers, if those sixteen people didn't mind getting up close and personal with each other. It also usually carried one grumpy ship’s cat. Because of Naz's former illegitimate career and John's current top-secret one, the _Hiraeth _rarely carried more than six people. The extra cabin space was folded up, the walls slid together to make more cargo space.

All walls on the _Hiraeth _were lighter and more durable than they looked, made out of sturdy carbon web. They slid with the help of an electric field and secured again when the field was powered off.

Naz was carefully opening up four cabin spaces, leaving the remaining four packed up tight. Non-living cargo was much easier to deal with than organic cargo, and if John was coming off of a job, Naz wasn't going to distract him with too many extra people. Considering that the _Hiraeth’s _systems were only designed for oxygen-based bipedals, that already limited the number of species and cross-species that could travel with them for any length of time.

John returned with a pair of Taabi passengers looking to head towards their homeworld. Usually, Naz wouldn’t trust anyone coincidentally from the world they were headed towards, but John was really thorough with his background checks as a general rule. These passengers wouldn’t cause any additional trouble getting out of port.

Through a mix of Ts’ybe and Common on all sides, Naz learned that their names were Tymm and Isobel, or at least that was as close as Common could approximate. They were a brother-sister pair; Isobel spoke much better Common than Tymm did, but Naz got the impression Tymm understood Common just fine and preferred not to speak.

They didn’t explain what they were doing on Sykkin, but they didn’t need to; Sykkin had a thriving tourism industry and from what Isobel was saying, they had decided to leave a few days early. Naz didn’t know of any species with foresense, but he’d met plenty of people who always seemed to have a feeling when things were about to go wrong. He wouldn’t be surprised if Tymm and Isobel had gotten a funny feeling and decided to leave.

They had about forty standard units worth of baggage between them, which barely made a dent in their passenger allowance. He wasn't entirely certain why they had so little with them, but he also wasn't really interested in asking.

“Were you here for tourism?” he asked.

Isobel hummed. “A little tourism, a little business. One of the major hospitals here hosted a conference on emergency medical intervention techniques across different planetary cultures; Tymm and I both spoke, but since the journey was so long we decided to see some of the planet. Melbia has an incredible arts and media culture if you ever get the chance to visit.”

John wandered back in. His Ts’ybe was much better than Naz’s, and he greeted the pair in Ts’ybe rather than Common.

“I was just double-checking the cabin,” he explained in Common, then kissed Naz briefly. He gestured, and the Taabi couple followed him, quietly murmuring to themselves.

Naz excused himself to go take watch on top of the _Hiraeth’s _rear hull plating. He hauled himself up and scanned for the trouble John assured him would be brewing. Besides, he had a cache of plaesiya bars and freeze-dried abacaxi arriving via an automated hover truck, and he wanted those loaded in as fast as possible.

“Excuse me, _ firryah_?” Someone called from the ground. The voice was humanoid and female, so it wasn't his shipment. _Firryah _was a Sykkian honorific roughly equivalent to _sir _in Common, despite the speaker's otherwise accentless Common. “Are you taking on passengers?”

“Passengers and cargo,” he called back. “Where are you trying to go?”

“Anywhere,” she said, and well. That was interesting.

He jumped down the six standard meters to the lower plating, and then eight more to the ground. If Sykkin gravity hadn't been lower than shipside gravity most days, he wouldn't have jumped so far.

“RUC Captain Nazem Kadri of Circulating Language Station 169B, English Sector, Sol Prime System. Currently of the _Hiraeth,_ independent trade vessel registered under the Republic of United Systems with licensure from Terra Beta. Anywhere, you said? It's a big galaxy. Bigger universe.”

“Anywhere safe,” she corrected. For the first time, he noticed the teenage boy behind her. “Private citizen Bonnie Marner of Melbia, Sykkin. Mechanical engineer. This is my son, Mitch.”

“Good to meet you. Why anywhere safe? What's wrong with Sykkin?”

She glanced around. “Everything's gone wrong at the palace,” she said, drawing her son closer. “My sister works there. It won't be safe here soon. I want my son off-world as soon as possible, and your ship is scheduled to depart tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Naz, trying to look disbelieving. “Just your boy, not yourself?”

“He has a brother, I have to--I have to try to find him. I'll pay for both our passages, I just--I have to at least know one of my boys will survive.”

“Alright. Well, we're going to Taabi, Terra Beta, and we should loop back to Sykkin in about a solar year or so, but that'd be costly. Terra Beta is about as stable as you could want, being--”

“A library planet,” the son said. “Mama, you have a sister there, right?”

“As safe a place as any. Two passages to Terra Beta, then.”

She paid in full, the credits and their background checks clearing easily. Naz got them settled into a bunk that could connect to an adjoining one if she found her other son in time. He showed them how to secure their trunks safely and fold out the beds, and then how to fold them into seating and pull out the table.

“It's a comfortable ship for her size,” Naz told. “There's a common area consisting of a kitchen area and seating. Everything folds in and out, though. Might take some time to get used to it.”

“I've never been off-world,” Mitch said quietly.

“There's nothing like it,” Naz said. “Get settled in. If you don't have bedding in those trunks, I'll order you some and get it delivered.”

“We’ll need to do that,” Bonnie said. “We kind of left in a hurry.”

“You also have time for picking up any local belongings. We don't leave until four AM local time. Twenty-five standard hours, I think. Plenty of time.”

Bonnie left as the hover trucks with Naz's shipments arrived. Mitch, clearly in need of something to do, helped bolt crates down as the mover drones brought the crates in. Jazzy wandered around, sniffing at their ankles and approving of each crate as they bolted them down. She was clearly enjoying the puddles of sunlight from the late afternoon sun.

As soon as one truck was empty, it buzzed off for another load, and that kept Naz and Mitch busy all afternoon. Naz called in a favor and got two sets of bedding delivered along with the cargo shipments. If the Marners didn't need it, it would resell at decent value; on second thought he placed an order for a case of personal effects in what was approximately the boy’s size. Better to be prepared than caught flat-footed with a passenger lacking basic hygiene products and clothing.

By the end of it, Naz was convinced that Mitch was a good sort, if a bit sheltered and clueless.

John brought back another passenger as Naz was fitting in the last load of light dried abacaxi. It wasn't as full as Naz would like, but it was enough to turn a profit, especially with at least five passengers.

The passenger was a half-vikka businesswoman with a traditional human name, Natalie Spooner. Her Sykkian passport cleared on the Republic’s servers and through Naz's backdoors. John's nod said she cleared on a few more levels, so Naz accepted Taukiko’s presence at face value.

Her presence brought the passenger count up to five, which rounded out their cargo nicely. Or it would if the Sykkian woman returned.

“If we leave now, we'll definitely be clear,” John murmured as he slotted their resupplied med kit into the place above the kitchen's sink.

“Missing a passenger,” Naz whispered back. “Picking up another flat of plaesiya. Leaving now would look strange.”

Outside of the ship, Naz heard an explosion, and then another one. It must have been massive to have been heard through the hull’s soundproofing, even with the main cargo bay open.

“You were saying?”

“We hold. Act the confused and angry first mate. We hold,” Naz repeated when John scowled.

“Look, Natalie is one of the standard cover identities,” John said lowly, leaning over Naz's shoulder. “Last time I met Natalie Spooner, it was Amanda.”

Amanda was the familiar name for one of John’s bosses, a woman who usually went by the name of her home planet, Kessel.

Naz raised his eyebrows. “Good to know if we get boarded. We wait for the boy's mom. Get a civ status report. We hold as long as is reasonable.”

John pinched his nose, then stormed off towards the hold door, roaring for a port official. He was the very image of an indignant first mate, and Naz took a moment to appreciate his ass as he walked away.

In the end, Naz held the ship as long as it was reasonable. They took on no more passengers and the mother never reappeared. No one could get information about what was going on, not even a party line from air control.

The flat line of John's mouth said he'd been partially responsible. Naz didn't ask further.

Naz spent the extra time ensuring everything was bolted down and stowed. Their chart was already in the nav, the most efficient route Naz and their extremely non-standard computer system could compute. There was nothing to do but wait, especially when John disappeared for half a standard day.

Naz only realized he'd been gone when he found bloody rags in their personal wash pile.

“Anyone fun?” He asked when he next saw John.

John shook his head and stumbled into Naz's arms. Some kills were bad for John; apparently this was one of them.

They ended up being grounded for another planetary day beyond John's disappearance while riots broke out in the city; since air control was very definitely on fire, Naz made the executive decision to get the fuck out of dodge. They’d been cleared for departure and had just been fourth in line for takeoff when the port had shut down entirely.

Mitch was worried sick. “My parents--” he said, and choked a little.

“They might be alive,” John said sympathetically as Naz cursed his way through the planet’s atmosphere. There were safety regulations for getting out of atmosphere that mostly involved autopilot. Naz was technically locked out of control, which was visibly stressing him out.

Through the portholes, he could see thick clouds of smoke winding up from the majority of buildings in the city. If this kept up any longer, other cities on Sykkin would start revolting and it’d be all-out civil war. Mitch’s family might be alive, but there was a much higher probability that they weren’t. Somehow John didn’t think bringing that up would help Mitch at all.

Mitch just shook his head. “How could anyone survive down there?” He gulped. “My mom wanted _someone_ to survive. I thought she was crazy.”

Jazzy was patrolling the passenger lounge, her tail sweeping back and forth. She’d wandered onto their ship with an air of having always been there, and Naz had gotten attached. There was a good argument to be made for feline companions on any kind of long voyage; they helped control pests and helped boost moods. Jazzy, in particular, was a breed sensitive to human moods, something they’d discovered when they’d taken her to a Tierran veterinary clinic.

Now, she stood in front of Mitch, meowing loudly with one paw on his shin. When Mitch leaned back, she leaped up onto his lap and settled in, purring loudly.

“Don’t make any sweeping judgments yet. If your family was smart enough to get you off-world before the riots started, they might have been smart enough to get out of the city.” John went over and pulled the solar screen over the porthole shut. Seeing the destruction of his planet was just making Mitch more distraught, so he closed the asteroid shield as well. The internal lighting of the ship adjusted to compensate for the darkness, tinting the room the warm yellow shade John preferred.

“The monarchs are dead,” Mitch said and curled his fingers into Jazzy’s fur. “How am I to know anything else?”

Natalie came to sit beside him. “You have their ID numbers? Contact information for their data chips?”

Mitch nodded stiffly.

“I have cousins in Canibrya on the other side of the planet. They can check the lists of the dead and the survivors in the capitol. We can video-call them. They’ll help you find your family.”

Mitch nodded again, jerkily. Jazzy licked at his wrist, bringing his attention back down to her.

“It’s scary, I know,” Natalie soothed. “We’ll find your family, little one.” Her ears flicked, the many silver rings pierced there clinking together.

Johh had never known vikkas to be particularly kind or caring, but he supposed there was a kinship of having come from Sykkin and having lost family. Or maybe Natalie was just particularly maternal. To be fair, most of the vikkas John knew had been mafia.

“I--I don’t want to think about it,” Mitch said, and then looked between them. “Where are you from?”

“I was born on Terra Prime,” John explained. “It’s a primarily water planet--”

“The human home planet,” Mitch said, surprising both John and Naz. “Thousands of years ago, or whatever.”

John nodded. “Not many humans there anymore, it’s pretty deserted. Mostly farms and tourist destinations for archeologists now, I think. I’m officially a Republic citizen, though, since Terra’s part of the Republic.”

An alarm blared somewhere on the ship and Naz raced off to find it. Mitch watched in interest as the door slid aside for Naz to hurry through.

“Where’s he from?”

“He’s human like me, but he’s a spacer,” John said. He stretched out on the couch now that Naz had gone and left him more room.

“A spacer?”

“You’ve lived a sheltered life, kiddo.” John rolled his eyes. “A spacer, you know, born in space? No home planet, really. He was born on an orbiting station in between Aislin and Toki.” John paused. “Uh, those are the two inhabitable planets orbiting Bete--”

“Betelgeuse, yeah.” Mitch had settled a little and was stroking his fingers down Jazzy’s back as she kneaded at his thigh. “I’m good at geography. Just not--slang.”

“Yeah, Common’s weird like that, same rules but different words from planet to planet.” John stretched luxuriously. The cushions were still warm from where Naz had been sitting. “So yeah, Naz's Republic too, since Toki’s the capital planet. Closest inhabitable to the brightest sun, or summat like that.” He shrugged. “He served under the Republic’s military branch as a pilot for nearly ten years, but he converted to Reservist when we got married. And then he made some interesting career choices, but--”

“You’re married?” Mitch asked. John sat up and stretched out his hand to show off his ring finger.

“Yeah. We follow the Tierran tradition of wedding rings,” he said, letting a hint of pride shine through. “It’s got ancient roots, but it’s a common theme in the three major Tierran religions.” He slid the ring off and let Mitch flip it over in his hands, looking at the letters inscribed on the inside: NSK-JT, and a set of coordinates.

“Really?”

“Really.” John hummed, taking the ring back and sliding it back home. “Tierran weddings have infiltrated all galactic weddings since Tierran society was the base for the Republic. What are Sykkian wedding traditions like?”

Mitch blinked. “Um. My mom wears yellow and green paint.”

“Sorry? Dyes?”

“No, paint. She puts yellow paint at her hairline, it means she’s the _ lissi _ of a house.”

John cocked his head to the side. Most of this he knew from background research on Sykkin, but it would keep the kid distracted. “Huh, really? What does that mean, being the _ lissi _ of a house?”

“It means…well, she’s the—matriarch of a family? The family respects her above all. She’s the house’s representative in all things. Yellow means she has respect. It's--it's usually the oldest of the active generation. My grandpapa was _ lissi _ until he stopped working, and then when my mom married in, she became lissi and he became _ linsi_.” Mitch had a soft look in his eyes, a clear fondness for his family tinged with worry over their well-being.

Natalie nodded in confirmation, the look in her eyes implying she knew John was well aware of Sykkian house structure. “A _lissi takes_ care of the generation who came before and the generation who will come after. There’s no associated gender, and it is extremely taboo to step up before your time or refuse to step down. Most Sykkians won’t even wear the color yellow out of respect.”

“And the green?”

Mitch touched the spot where the green paint would apparently go. “Green is married, so she puts a green dot over her ears. Green is the most common paint.”

Natalie nodded again. “Blue is widowed, divorced, or single. There isn’t a cultural distinction—you’re not bound to a house.”

“Red?”

“Rebels. People who don’t want their status to be known.” Natalie touched the tips of her ears, where sure enough, there was blue paint daubed in a neat line. Her silver hoop earrings clinked as she pushed her hair aside. “Plain hairlines are foreigners or younger people. It’s falling out of fashion with people Mitch’s age.”

Mitch was frowning, a furrow in his forehead. “My older brother used green ribbon. He’d braid it into his hair.” He tugged at the lock of hair behind his ear. “He was worried about getting sick.”

“All the paint traditionally had brism in it to make it last,” Natalie explained. “But the blue was particularly bad.”

John winced. Brism was noxious stuff. He knew more than one person who’d died from brism-induced poisoning.

Mitch nodded in agreement. “It’s not bad once you've built up a tolerance to it, but people who are thrown out of their house and put it on for the first time, they go a little crazy.”

If John was understanding, _ a little crazy _was probably an understatement. Brism overdose in human and human-adjacent species usually started with foaming at the mouth and ended with blood pressure so high they bled out inside of their skull. While Sykkian biology might process brism differently than human biology, John would bet money _a little crazy _was polite for _batshit insane. _

“Do you wear any?” John asked. 

“Paint?” Mitch blinked, looking both baffled and a little lost. “No, why would I?”

“He’s unmarried and attached to a house,” Natalie explained. “He wouldn’t wear anything until he married or gained status as the patriarch of his house, or if he was removed from the house somehow.”

“Which I might have, considering...you know, everything.” Mitch slumped back against the wall. He scrubbed at his face, looking exhausted and much older than John knew he was. “But I don’t know, and it would be disrespectful to assume.”

“We made it out of atmo!” Naz yelled, bounding back into the room. He was either entirely unaware of the solemn air he’d just broken, or he’d done it very deliberately as a distraction. With Naz, it could go either way, but John would bet money this was a result of the latter. “Welcome to your outer-space home for the next three weeks until we reach Taabi, our first planetary stop. If you’re not sure where anything is, ask me or John; if both of us are asleep, the on-board computer system should be able to direct you to where you need to be. Settle in, friends, and enjoy the ride.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: SYKKIN TO TAABI**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz always felt the most at home in space. He loved being planetside, especially with John, but he had been born in the airless voids between planets and had spent most of his life there. There was something that settled in his soul when he was flying his ship in the endless space between stars, and there was always something that needed his attention onboard a ship crewed with only two.

John too was comfortable in space, finding work to do and communicating with his bosses back on Terra Prime.

From what Naz had seen thus far of his passengers, Natalie was as comfortable in space as Naz or John. The Taabi pair were both somewhat anxious fliers, but they mostly kept to themselves or conversed with John in the soft raspy hush of Ts’ybe. Tymm seemed determined to use their time in space to sit and read, while Isobel suggested games and media in a tone that suggested she’d rather not think about being in the void of space.

Mitch was clearly the most anxious of the lot, which didn't surprise Naz. His departure had been sudden and he wasn't sure what would be left of his home and his family upon his return.

It took two days for them to get a clear signal back to Sykkin to send messages. Naz helped Mitch tap out a concise message letting his family know he was okay and set up a ‘bot to scan the lists of dead and injured to see if anyone in his family came up as deceased. Even Natalie’s family on the other side of the planet weren’t coming up with anything about the Marner family. It was as if the family had just vanished into the ether.

On the upside, there were no pings that popped up for Bonnie Marner’s death, or for any of the names Mitch input for his extended family. On the downside, he got no replies back.

“Maybe their communicators were destroyed,” Naz suggested gently. Once he’d discovered that literally nothing was coming up for the Marner family, he did a little poking around on his own and discovered the complete vanishing of entire families was something of a pattern in this particular incident. John had gone all tight-lipped when Naz had prodded a little, so Naz had decided to not ask any other questions.

“I hope that’s all it is,” Mitch murmured, staring at the screen of his tablet with exhausted blue eyes. He’d found a strip of blue cloth somewhere on the ship and had knotted it into his hair just behind his ear. It was a synthetic fabric with a faint shimmer to it, and Mitch had taken to rubbing the fabric between his fingers when he was thinking.

Naz nudged him. “Come on, help me out with the ‘ponics system. If we get it working, we can have fresh greens in a couple of weeks, even without having to stop planetside.”

It turned out that Mitch, for all the gaps in his cultural knowledge, was a dab hand at mechanics.

“I was studying a style of engineering,” Mitch explained, picking over Naz’s toolkit with a decisive look on his face. “Somewhere between mechanical and electrical, I think.” He added a Sykkian word Naz couldn't hope to translate, then pulled out Naz’s set of wrenches with a wide grin.

“Well, maybe you can help me figure out what I’m doing here.” Naz settled onto the floor and pulled his tablet towards him, opening the instruction manual that had come with his new ‘ponics system. “The old ‘ponics system here is something like fifteen years old. Came with the ship when I bought it, and I think it was installed ten years into the ship’s lifespan. I’ve been patching it up as I go, but it’s not as efficient as I’d like, and it’s definitely not as pretty as I’d like.”

Mitch hummed, reaching over to pet Jazzy as she trotted into the room, proudly carrying one of her toys. “So you want to rip it out and start over?”

Naz rolled his eyes. “No, so--John got me this new ‘ponics set for New Years, and I was planning on cannibalizing it to repair the old one, or if I can figure it out, splice the two together. If I could double the amount of ‘ponics space I have, I’d be pretty pleased.”

Abandoning Jazzy, Mitch snagged the tablet, looking over the instructions. “I don’t suppose you have the schematics for the original ‘ponics?”

“Those were long gone before I got the ship, Mitchy. I have a rough sketch I drew up here, but I’m not a mechanic.” Naz scratched Jazzy’s chin, then took her toy and threw it, sending her on a game of fetch.

John poked his head around the corner. “Hey, Naz, can I grab you real quick? The comms system keeps beeping and finally, your contact on Taabi paged me about the shipment of books you’re bringing him.”

“Ah, shit, I forgot I had a call with Zach. You gonna be okay, Marner?” Naz asked. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, but don’t feel obligated to work on this if you don’t want to.”

Mitch looked up from the schematics, an unholy grin on his face. “I’ll be fine. You go do--whatever. I’ll be here.”

As they were walking away from the ‘ponics sector, John rolled his eyes. “I get the feeling we’re going to need to fish him out in a few hours for food and sleep.”

“As long as he doesn’t set my ‘ponics on fire, he can do whatever he wants,” Naz retorted. “Good for the kid to keep busy.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

As they settled into their voyage, Mitch slowly started loosening up. It took him a few days to puzzle out Naz’s wake cycle, but once he figured out it was three hours longer than the Sykkian solar day he matched Naz fairly easy. Naz got used to Mitch sitting in the kitchen by the time he himself was prepping an easy mornmeal. From there, it wasn’t unusual for Mitch to trail Naz around the ship or to disappear into the ‘ponics sector with a wrench. Jazzy stuck to Mitch pretty closely, trailing him around the ship the way Mitch trailed Naz.

Usually, John would make his appearance about halfway through Naz’s wakecycle; Naz had yet to figure out the wakecycles of either Natalie or the Taabi pair. Regardless, there was an easy aspect to the socialization of the ship, despite the fact that they were fleeing a planet that was disintegrating into a civil war. The one meal a day they all made sure to eat together was surprisingly not awkward. Mostly.

“Naz?” Mitch asked, pushing his food around with a spoon. “Where’s John?”

“He’s probably caught up in vidscreen calls and forgot the time,” Naz said lightly. “It happens since he does his work from here instead of planetside.”

Natalie and Mitch both nodded uncomfortably. Tymm and Isobel just kept eating unconcernedly. From beneath the table, Jazzy mrowled mournfully, clearly hoping someone would take pity on her and give her some of their food.

“I’ll make him up a plate,” Naz said. “He doesn’t eat much eventime anyways.”

Isobel and Tymm’s food was spicy, the way Taabi food tended to be. Naz still struggled with pronouncing their names, but they seemed to find his clumsy Ts’ybe charming rather than offensive. It was kind of hilarious, seeing Mitch struggle to eat the strange spices that burned his tongue--Naz had always hated that about Sykkin cuisine, how salty and sweet it was, and how lacking in heat--until Isobel gently took Mitch aside and showed him how to curb the spice with the rounds of milk-bread set on the table.

After evenmeal, Natalie and Mitch helped Naz clean up and fold the table away. As the four passengers settled in to tell stories and pass the evening, Naz excused himself to check on the autopilot and take John’s meal down to him.

He’d packed John’s meal in a collapsible bento that would keep it hot for up to six standard hours, complete with little compartments to keep different foods from mingling. A compartment at the bottom even housed wedges of Taabi milk bread and a variety of utensils. He tapped sharply on their shared bunk’s door three times to warn John and Auston to stop talking about anything sensitive, then swiped in with his palmprint.

He was met by John’s warm laugh, always a pleasant greeting.

Naz leaned over John’s shoulder to see the vidscreen. He set the bento down on the table next to John, who picked up his fork gratefully.

“Hey, Auston,” Naz said, grinning. “You gonna give me back my husband anytime soon? You’ve been talking for hours. JT missed evenmeal.”

“Ah, we’re mostly done anyway, you’ll get him back soon enough,” Auston promised. 

John leaned up to kiss Naz quickly and said, “Right, Naz, let me finish up with Matts?”

“Fifteen minutes, and you’d better finish your dinner,” Naz said and left John with a quick kiss.

While John talked to Auston in low, serious tones, Naz carefully folded their bed down from the wall and ducked into the adjoining bathroom to change into a loose top and pants. He could barely turn around in there when the toilet and sink weren't pulled out, but being captain meant not having to share the common wash area.

With the bed down, there wasn’t much room to maneuver in their room, so he crawled over the bed to pull their pillows and blankets out from the storage compartment behind where the bed folded out.

“Taabi food?” John called over his shoulder. “Our guests cooked?”

“They offered, and I wasn’t going to say no. You done?”

“With official business, yeah. Auston wants to say _ hi _.”

“I can do that. Hey, Auston! How’ve you been?”

“Hey! I’m alright, you know how it is. Too much classified to say much. How’re you, though, Naz?”

“Trading’s been good, been an uptick in demand for everything off Terra Prime--”

“Which means you’ll be seeing your in-laws soon, then--”

“You _ know _ I can’t say what I want about my in-laws when John’s right here--”

John made a face at them through his mouthful of food.

“We got an improved hydroponics rig when we were planetside on Sykkin. One of our passengers is a fair hand with engineering so he’s helping me set it up. We might have to keep him on.”

Auston raised an eyebrow. Naz was notoriously picky about who he let on his ship, much less the people he let stay long term. As far as Auston was aware, he and John were the only ones. “This miracle engineer got a name?”

“Mitch Marner,” John said. “Sweet kid. His family was Sykkin, out of the capital city, never been off-planet before. Whole family except him got killed in the uprising there. He hasn’t got anyone left, and you know how Naz feels about us loners.”

Auston whistled while Naz ruffled John’s hair in revenge. “Poor kid. Think he’ll stay on with you?”

Naz went and sat on John’s lap since this conversation was definitely not ending anytime soon. “Don’t think he’s got anywhere else to go and he seems to like it here well enough. We’ll be cycling back to Sykkin in a standard year, so we could always take him back.”

Auston nodded sympathetically. “So you’ve got a Sykkian kid onboard--where you off to now?”

Naz launched into a description of where they were off to next, which planets they were dropping passengers and cargo off at. “We’ll probably end up at Terra Prime in, what, six solar months?”

“Might see you there, then,” Auston said, grinning. “I’m getting rebased from Toki to Terra Prime in the next few months, after my next op.”

“It’s still a pretty big planet,” John said, but he was smiling. “What have you been up to, Auston?”

Auston chattered about his life for a while--unlike John and Nazem, he lived planetside and the amount of daily change in his life constantly amazed Naz, whose entire life was based out of his ship.

When John finally closed the call, he gave Naz a long, lingering kiss. Naz could taste the Taabi spice in John’s mouth, along with the soft sweetness of Taabi milk bread.

“Mmm. What’s that for?” Naz asked. He shifted so he was more folded up in John’s lap and rested his head on John’s shoulder.

“You can’t just sit on my lap and expect me not to kiss you,” John said. Naz snorted.

“So what did Auston have to say that was so important you missed dinner?”

John skimmed his hand up Naz’s back. “Just work stuff.”

“You _ just _ finished a job, they can’t possibly have given you another one already.” Naz pouted. “You promised you’d be done for a bit. We’ll be grounded on Tierra Prima for a while and I refuse to let you abandon me alone with your family. Your sister is _ terrifying _.”

John snorted. “She’s not that bad and anyway, it’s not a new job. Just a snag in my last one.”

“Off Sykkin?”

“Mmhm. Turns out I flubbed something important and so there’s some, uh. Political kerfuffle. Auston’s on cleanup so he wanted to know what I’d done so he could do his best.”

Naz pulled back, studying the expression on John's face. “He was on Sykkin?”

“No, he’s going now. He’ll arrive in three solar days, but that might actually be too late.” John made a face. “I might be up on disciplinary charges if he’s right.”

“Was the flub your fault?”

“That’s debatable.” John shrugged. “Might be stuck planetside for awhile while they sort it out. They might go after you.”

“Soft spot?”

“Soft spot.” John leaned up and kissed Naz again. “They’ll be surprised if they try to snag you.”

Naz wheezed out a laugh. “They have my service file, they know exactly who I am and what I’m capable of.”

“Mm.” John smoothed his hands over Naz’s waist. “And yet you’ve learned so many more ways to be deadly in the last decade.”

Naz grinned into the kiss. As was wont to happen when they were alone together with no pressing obligations, it was easy to get lost in each other, shedding clothes as they tumbled onto their bed.

They broke apart to a polite rap on the door.

“Ignore it,” Naz said, trying to pull John closer.

“Might be an emergency,” John reminded him, ever the sensible one. “Can't let your ship go down in flames.”

“Uggh, practical,” Naz groaned, flopping back on the bed. John gave him a brief peck on the lips, then stood to cross the room in two short strides.

“Can I help you?” John asked as he opened the door.

Mitch stood there, shifting nervously. He flushed when he realized he’d clearly interrupted something. “Uh. I can come back later.”

Naz shrugged, noticing that Jazzy was curling around Mitch’s ankles, purring and walking in figure eights. “No, you’re here. What’s going on?”

“The ‘ponics keep beeping and I can’t figure out how to make it stop.” Mitch shuffled. Even in his soft grey sleep clothes, he had his blue ribbon plaited behind his ear. “Natalie’s been threatening to take a crowbar to ‘em, clean air be damned.”

“Oh, for sunssake,” Naz grumbled, coming up behind John. “The ‘ponics, you said?”

“Yeah, the new system.”

“Ah, I bet I know what’s going on,” Naz said and stretched. “The old system’s probably freaking out over the new one being spliced in. Come on, let’s go fix it.”

“Um. You can finish up with--”

“Nah, the mood’s been broken. We’ll do something later. C’mon, busted hydroponics.”

“Naz,” John called in amusement, once Naz was out in the corridor. “You might want to put some kind of pants on first.”

Naz struck a pose. “What, this not doing it for you?”

“I think Mitch is about to burst out laughing,” John said dryly. He ducked back into their quarters to retrieve a pair of loose drawstring pants, which he threw at Naz.

“Pants are leg prisons,” Naz pronounced, then pulled the pants on. He winked at John, then sauntered back out into the hall, a wheezing Mitch following suit. “We’ll finish this later!”


	2. PORT: VLVIL, TAABI

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: VLVIL, TAABI**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Taabi was a rust-red planet with a primarily helium-based atmosphere. Naz dug through his personal storage container to find his respirator two days before they landed. He set about tinkering with it to make sure it was in good working order before they arrived.

“Why do you need a respirator?” Mitch asked, leaning forward on his elbows to watch Naz check over the valves. “Tymm and Isobel don’t use them.”

“Well, they don’t need them on board,” John explained. He was making something in the kitchen that smelled heavily of chili pepper; Naz hoped he wasn’t getting too experimental with their evenmeal. “But Taabi isn’t exactly a hospitable planet, so the citizens either wear respirators or they stay inside the domed cities. I’m sure they have their own respirators.”

“You’re not staying in the cities?” Mitch asked Naz.

Naz shook his head. “No, I’m meeting up with a friend across the planet, and even though I’ll be in a vehicle the whole time or in the domes, I like to have my respirator just in case.” He paused. “Actually--I think John’s respirator might fit you. I know you said you’d never been off of Sykkin before; want to see another planet? It’s just a quick trip, six hours in the mag-lev train and one day in Rysm. I’m meeting my friend Ennis. It’ll be six hours back, and then we’d head back off-planet afterward from Vlvil.”

Mitch looked between them. “John, are you not going with Naz?”

John kept stirring the pot on the cooker, though he shook his head. “Nah, someone’s got to stay with the ship.”

“I mean, if you’re okay with it?”

“I'll have to make sure the respirator actually fits you,” Naz warned.

“If it doesn’t I'll take him to the markets in Vlvil.” JT tasted the food from his pot, frowned, and added a few shakes of spices. “There’s probably a guided tour in Common somewhere in the city.”

Mitch looked entirely too excited at the idea of a guided tour; Naz wondered just how sheltered this kid had been on Sykkin.

JT lowered the heat on the cooker, then leaned against the counter to watch Naz and Mitch. He scratched Jazzy’s chin when she jumped up on the counter, investigating the smell of food cooking. “Did you ever get to visit anywhere fun on Sykkin?”

Mitch was bouncing in his seat a little. Naz shifted all of his tools out of Mitch’s reach, just in case. “I mean, kind of? I’ve been to most of the major cities, all the provincial capitals. I’ve never been on a mag-lev train before.”

“Right, Sykkin uses primarily air transport for long-distance, right?” John pushed himself up off the counter and started prepping a pot of rice.

Mitch nodded. “Not flat enough and too much water for a planetary mag-lev, and regional is cool but kind of useless.”

“You’re more excited for the mag-lev than you are for the new planet, aren’t you?”

“It’s a _mag-lev,_” Mitch enthused. “Do you know how much engineering has to go into a planet-sized system?”

Naz glared at John, a little jokingly. “Look what you've done, you've gone and excited him.”

“Maybe we can build a working model together,” John deadpanned. “Mag-levs now, mag-levs forever.”

John’s respirator did fit on Mitch, so when they landed in Vlvil, the planetary hub of Sykkin, Mitch had an overnight bag packed and settled on his shoulders along with an emergency bottle of oxygen and the respirator.

“You know, we’re not heading for Rysm until tomorrow morning,” Naz told Mitch as he started the process of opening the passenger doors.

“I just wanted to be ready,” Mitch said, but he did take off the backpack and stowed it in his cabin. When he came back, the customs official had come to check all their papers, a process which Mitch watched in awe. He produced his ID and digital passport when the official asked and didn’t blink when he was registered as crew instead of as a passenger. 

As they filled out the paperwork and collected information about leasing temporary warehouse space, Mitch flitted around watching everything with wide eyes. He helped Natalie unload her personal cargo, and bid Tymm and Isobel goodbye in clumsy Tsy’be.

“Take care, little M’tsh,” Tymm told Mitch, tugging lightly on Mitch’s blue ribbon. “If you need anything, let us know. We live in a small settlement in the southern hemisphere, but if you ever find yourself here send us a message.”

Mitch fumbled out a word that Naz thought was supposed to be Tsy’ be _thank you _but was probably a little closer to _pillow_ with the way he pronounced it. Isobel gave him a brisk handclasp, and the two Taabi citizens were disappearing down the gangway and into the city.

“I have to lease out some warehouse space and find one of my buyers,” Naz told Mitch once the passengers were off-ship. “John is going to start handling some of the planetary maintenance stuff and refill our emergency backup tank, dispose of our true waste, and see if any of our communications software needs an update. You want to come with me or stay with John?”

Mitch looked torn.

“We’ll eat planetside this evening,” John said, coming up behind them. “Visit one of the markets, eat at a local restaurant. You’ll have a chance to explore if you want to see some of the ship processes in port.”

Mitch nodded. “Okay. Then I'll stay.”

“It'll be with a friend of ours,” Naz added. “Right, I'm going to get my things together and I'll be off.”

Naz left them behind, leaving John to introduce Mitch to the many and varied responsibilities of docking their ship in port. Taabi had a docking system similar to most planets with domed systems; ships with a quick stopover would only attach their ship to a jetway and let off passengers and cargo without the entire ship being docked inside a dome. Ships with a longer stop, like their own _ Hiraeth,_ landed on an unpressurized airstrip and then taxied into a hangar bay, which sealed behind them and pressurized, with a permanent jetway linking them to the airport and from there the planetary travel hub. It took an hour or two to get from the travel hub into the city proper, but it did mean that their ship was in a private hangar and they could easily handle necessary repairs.

John walked Mitch through disposing of their true waste--on a trip that long, and with the supplies they’d pack, they only had about thirty standard units of true waste, and he paid the fee for disposing of it. Their recyclables they sold to the travel hub, who would sort and resell it to a manufacturer; John knew they could get a better price if he sold it directly to manufacturers in the city, but he also know what a pain getting the correct import permits would be, and it would just be another obnoxious line item on their annual tax bill. 

With the travel hub credits obtained from the recycling, he let Mitch handle ordering the fuel they needed to refill.

“So I need to ask for 370 liters of liquid fuel for an M-class Chevrolet, and 60 standard units of solid fuel?” Mitch hissed under his breath as they stood in line.

John nodded. “And if they try to charge you more than 10 sols per liter, or more than 18 sols per standard unit, they’re cheating you.”

Mitch bit his lip and nodded. “Okay. 10 sols per liter, and 18 sols per standard unit; and here’s the ship registration, your pilot license, and the membership card for the discount, in that order?”

“You got it. You’ll be fine.”

Mitch did stumble once when arranging the delivery time, but John stepped in and smoothly redirected the salesman to the correct delivery time.

“Okay,” Mitch said, once he had the sales slip in hand. “Now what?”

“We archive it, break for a snack and hydration, and then we start checking over the outside panels so we know if we need to make repairs while we’re in drydock.”

On the walk back to their hangar, John bought Mitch a cup of caf, sweetened with syrup and sweating from the cold, and a local pastry. John had learned early on Mitch would try just about anything put in front of him, but he had a wicked sweet tooth. This pastry, stuffed with a sweetened egg and jam mixture, would be right up his alley. He got himself a savory one filled with dried fruit and a similar cup of caf without the sweetener, along with another pair of pastries for Naz.

Mitch chatted a lot on the way back; John mostly let the stream of noise wash over him. There was always a tinge of sadness to Mitch that came from leaving his planet in such a state of doubt, but he also had a sense of brightness the _Hiraeth _sorely needed.

John liked Mitch; he was sweet and earnest and gave Naz much needed help on the severely undercrewed _Hiraeth._ He was a quick learner, too. Once John showed him how to check hull plating for potential cracks and weak spots, he had a sharp eye for defects. When John double-checked Mitch’s work, Mitch had flagged several spots John had already noticed and a few he hadn’t, and the remaining hull seemed solid. Mitch was also nimble and fearless, clambering up and down the ship with only the aid of his magnetic harness and safety belt, moving like he’d done this sort of repair work his whole life instead of only learning that morning. The fact that Jazzy adored him was only a bonus.

“Do you usually do these repairs?” Mitch asked. He was inspecting a patch of the hull that was a little dented but otherwise looked sturdy. After a moment’s thought, Mitch retrieved the yellow marker he was using to indicate _worrying, but not a priority _and outlined the dents.

“When I have the time,” John replied. He himself was checking the air seals on portholes, ensuring that the rubber sealant hadn’t cracked in the freezing void of space or in the scorching heat of atmospheric entry. Inside the ship, Jazzy was darting from porthole to porthole, batting at him through the layers of reinforced plastiglass.“Naz does a lot of it; it’s his ship, and he doesn’t always trust other people to do it right. Sometimes we’ll hire an outside crew if it’s something major or something we don’t know how to fix ourselves; sometimes when we have an extra crew or a passenger who knows how to, we’ll barter for repairs there. Most of the time simple stuff like this is pretty easy and I like being useful around the ship.”

Mitch slid his primary harness attachment point across the hull and moved himself a meter over, moving his secondary harness attachment point across once he was settled. He started inspecting another panel, this one looking a little rusty around the edges. “Is that why you have all the tools?”

“We have a pretty standard mechanic’s set leftover from our last mechanic, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to use all of them,” John admitted. “The Hiraeth is a pretty sturdy ship, and I do what I can to keep her going--if she’s grounded, Naz can’t trade goods and we get stuck somewhere while she gets repaired by professionals. It’s why we’re so relieved you know at least the basics of mechanics work since neither of us really has the time or inclination to learn.” 

“I keep meaning to ask,” Mitch said. “What does _ Hiraeth _ mean?”

John shrugged. “You’d have to ask Nazem. He’s the one who bought and named the ship.”

Mitch kept peppering John with questions, scrambling across the hull and performing maintenance. More often than not, Mitch answered his own questions, filling the air with bright chatter.

Once they had finished with the hull, John showed Mitch how to place an order for the repair parts they needed, and then shooed him off to clean up for evenmeal.

“Wear something that you can add a layer too,” John warned. “I think the Taabi climate control is fairly mild, but if you're used to Sykkin or ship atmo, you'll want to be able to add or remove layers until you figure out where your comfortable temperature is.”

When Mitch re-emerged from his cabin, he was wearing a jacket layered over his usual shipside jumpsuit. His hair was damp, but the blue ribbon was once again plaited into his hair, this time tucked into the collar of his shirt so the ends didn’t dangle.

John sighed, and went to retrieve another set of clothing from Naz’s storage drawers: Mitch couldn’t have looked more like an off-world foreigner if he tried, and John could do without the attention that might bring. As safe a planet as Taabi was, every planet had someone willing to raise prices or pickpocket someone obviously foreign. John was confident he’d be able to stop a pickpocketer in their tracks, but he also didn’t particularly want to spend the evening dealing with Taabi police.

Naz returned just as John was jamming a hat onto Mitch’s head.

“Zach just messaged me,” he said as he clambered up the gangway. “He’s set up a reservation at a local place in a couple of standard hours.”

“Get ready to go, then,” John scolded.

Naz just flapped an unconcerned hand at him and vanished into the captain’s quarters.

“Where are we going?” Mitch asked, taking the hat off his head.

John took the hat and jammed it back onto Mitch, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “You’ll burn if you don’t have some protection when we get out of the travel hub,” he informed Mitch. “And we’re meeting up with a friend of ours, Zach Hyman. He’s an instructor at one of the universities here in cultural anthropology.”

Mitch hummed. “How’d you meet?”

“He contracted us to get his wife a necklace,” John replied, leaving a few details out. He sat down on the bench in the common room. “His wife’s family had a tradition when they had their first baby, the mother got given a necklace with a Tierran gemstone, and he was having a hell of a time getting someone to ship him a single Tierran sapphire. Naz ended up splitting one off of a larger shipment and selling it to him at cost, and ever since we get dinner whenever we’re on the same planet. That was about four years ago now?”

“Five,” Naz corrected, breezing back into the room. He’d changed into something nearly identical to what Mitch was wearing, with an extra stole draped over his shoulders in a riot of color. “He asked if we could bring him a crate of pop-culture from Sykkin. They’re in my bag,” he assured John. “I made sure I didn’t forget them. Jake and Morgan sent some things along as well; he’ll have to tell me how he wants that stuff transported since they're a little bulkier.”

“Is he studying Sykkin?” Mitch asked.

“I think he’s just curious,” Naz said. “Alright, everyone ready to go?”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Zach was a little taller than Mitch himself, with a broad, easy smile. He brought each of them--even Mitch--into a hug as a greeting. Like many Taabi citizens who lived outside the primary domes, he carried an emergency respirator. Unlike the bulky respirators Naz and John owned, his was much sleeker and more subtly a part of his clothing.

“It’s good to see you. I see you landed okay.”

“Mm,” Naz replied. “Air control was a little backed up, but when is it not? Your trip in was alright?”

Zach grinned wryly. “Mag-lev ran a little behind schedule, but when is it not?” he turned to Mitch, giving him a long look-over. “You must be Mitch. Naz was impressed with your ‘ponics work.”

Mitch flushed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, thanks. It wasn’t that hard.”

“If Naz says it was difficult, I believe him.” Zach was still grinning. “I've seen the man fix the climate control on the Hiraeth with metal tape and a broom.”

“That wasn't a fixing so much as it was desperately hoping it would hold until I got an expert in,” Naz retorted. “Anyways, where are we going?”

“There’s a multicultural food hall I thought we could go to unless you have other suggestions. I thought we’d all be able to find something we like since I wasn’t sure what sort of food Mitch would like.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” Naz said.

The food hall was large and somewhat overwhelming to even John, who was generally not skeptical of large crowds. They split up to purchase meals, Mitch trailing after John as he picked something local but with a milder flavor palate.

They all reconvened at a table, each setting their own meal up.

Naz and Zach made small talk while John showed Mitch how to mix together the sauces and toppings to his own personal taste. Then, the conversation turned serious. 

“You wear blue,” Zach observed. “Would it be impolite to ask?”

Mitch grimaced. “It’s complicated.”

Zach stirred his soup. “Sykkin is on the edge of a civil war,” he said bluntly, watching Mitch. “Is that why you left?”

Naz swore. “_ Zach _.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mitch said. He was a little pale but resolute. “My mother thought it was dangerous to stay. I didn’t know how bad it was until the _ Hiraeth _took off and I could see the smoke.”

Zach nodded, gaze still steady and observant. “My wife has friends there who say there’s very little communication in or out.”

“We’ve been unable to contact his family,” John put in. “We’ll keep trying.”

“Is that why you don’t wear yellow?”

Mitch sighed. “I don’t know if I can wear yellow. So until I know, I'll wear blue.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help,” Zach said. “Let me know.”

The rest of the meal was pleasant; Naz attempted to explain how Sykkin spice profiles differed from Taabi, with Zach offering gentle corrections at times. It was clear to John that there was something Zach wanted to say, but it was equally clear that Zach wasn’t going to say it with Mitch at the table. A subtle glance from Naz confirmed that he was picking up on it as well, though Mitch didn’t know Zach well enough to notice anything.

As Mitch finished his food, Naz suggested that they go to find something savory to end the meal; Mitch seemed excited to explore and try something new.

“What do you really want to say?” John asked once Naz and Mitch had left the table.

Zach hummed, lingering a little over the dregs of his drink.

“I don’t know for certain,” he told John. ”But something feels off about this.”

John sipped at his own drink, saying nothing.

“You don't know Mitch and you let him into your ship and onto your crew within days of meeting him, with no questions asked about his origin or background? You can't contact any of his friends or family, and he's never been off-world? John, what are you _ thinking _?”

John’s lips quirked up on one side. “He cleared background checks on every level I could put him through, and then some. He doesn’t have a spotless record, but he’s as clean as any person could be. He knows his stuff, and Naz likes him. If there were any red flags, believe me, he’d already be off the ship and out of our lives.”

“It’s just not like you, and that’s what worries me.”

John nodded. “I get that, but think of how _ you _ met us.”

Zach snorted. “Alright, that’s fair.”

When Naz had told Mitch how they’d met Zach, it had been a somewhat condensed version of the story: Zach and his wife had been passengers on the _ Hiraeth_, and Naz had immediately taken a liking to Zach. Another passenger on board had been acting a little off, and Naz had called it immediately--something Zach had also caught on to. Four days into the voyage, she and her companion had attempted to commandeer the _Hiraeth _while the crew slept. Naz, irate at anyone attempting to mess with his ship and sleep-deprived from attempting to fix the climate control, had woken the whole ship with his yelling once he’d subdued the two would-be hijackers.

John’s own relationship with Zach was a little subtler, but it was similarly based on gut instinct. They were both quieter, prone to sitting back and thinking through things before acting. They had friends in common who were proof enough that Zach was trustworthy--if Morgan Rielly spoke highly of someone they were certainly deserving of the praise.

“If this is some elaborate con,” John said quietly. “Quite frankly we’d deserve to be conned for not catching him.”

Zach hummed. “For your sake, I hope so. How much longer are you planning on staying?” The change in subject was abrupt but not unexpected. “I have to head home tonight, but if you’re planetside for a week or so, Alannah has been hinting she’d love to see you.”

“Three more days,” John told him. “We have to sell the cargo we have and then reload; it shouldn’t be that hard to transfer ownership to a wholesaler, but getting the right deals will probably take a little more time. Naz has to meet one of his buyers in Rysm, but I’ll be working here while he’s gone. He’s taking Mitch.”

“You sound like you’re in a hurry.”

“We were hoping to make it to Terra Beta by their next lunar cycle,” John confirmed. “Plus it’ll give us a little time to do maintenance on the ship with some of the new parts Naz ordered, and it’ll be easier to manipulate the bulkier parts in low-grav.”

“I’ll tell her you said hello, then,” Zach said. “She’ll be disappointed she missed you.”

“Sometimes it goes that way.” John looked up to see Naz and Mitch returning. “Did you have a general plan for the rest of the evening?”

Zach shrugged. “There’s good theater here. This region is well-known for its custom manufacturing. I thought we could take your mechanic to some of the machining workshops and see what he thought of them.”

Mitch perked up, setting a dish of sour curd on the table. “Machining workshops?”

“Zach thought you’d like to visit a few while we’re here,” John told him, and let Mitch’s excited chatter wash over him.

The rest of the evening passed calmly, with John mulling over Zach’s words in his head. It bothered him to think that me might be missing something, but on the other hand--he was good at his job. If he was missing something, he deserved for it to come back and bite him in the ass, but if he wasn’t, he was suspicious of someone who’d done nothing to deserve the suspicion.

There was nothing for it but to wait it out, he decided. All secrets came out eventually.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: RYSM, TAABI**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

The mag-lev was pretty standard, as far as mag-levs went, but Mitch was thrilled. He had downloaded a book onto his tablet with the history of this particular mag-lev, and was rattling off facts at an alarming speed.

Naz, used to John’s enthusiastic babble about things like sniper scopes and fishing lures, mostly tuned him out with the appropriate amount of “mm-hms,” “yeahs”, and “tell me mores.”

Mitch wasn't quite a child, but Naz was reminded how isolated and sheltered he'd apparently been. It took them a little bit to get settled in, but once the mag-lev started moving and Mitch got over his excitement, it was a quiet ride across the planet. 

They were met at the station by a bearded, blond human who held a sign reading N. KADRI & GUEST in Common in one hand and holding a tablet that he was clearly reading from in the other.

Or not, since he immediately flagged them down. 

“God, Naz, you and JT really did settle down,” the blond says. “Kid and everything, huh?”

Naz gave him a pointed look. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I know you. Enzo is expecting you. I'm Willy. I help out.”

Naz heaved a sigh, looking up at the dome above them and praying for patience. “Is Enzo here?”

“Mm, somewhere. What's your kid’s name?”

Mitch shifted beside Naz, clearly a little unsure how to respond to being called Naz's son. “This is Mitch. He’s my new mechanic.”

The blond gave Mitch a once-over, head to toe. “Gylashi?”

“Sykkian,” Mitch said. “You done with the interrogation?”

“Ooh, he’s got a bite to him.”

Naz sighed deeply, rubbing his temples. “When will Enzo be back?”

“Oh, sometime,” Willy replied. “He’s not going to want to see your friend, though.”

“If he wants me to do him a favor he might have to deal with it,” Naz said mildly, hand drifting to his hip. He wasn’t carrying anything more than a disposable two-shot and a laser-blade, but this kid didn’t need to know that.

Willy raised an eyebrow, the wide smile never faltering. “Right this way, Mr. Kadri, baby Kadri.”

They took a transit line from the travel hub to a smaller dome adjacent to the largest dome making up Rysm. Willy chatted the whole way, pointing out popular tourist locales and local landmarks. Naz knew it was a way for Willy to size them up; he was almost certain at least three of the other passengers were probably in Enzo’s employ.

Mitch, it seemed, was a natural at this somewhat shadier side of Naz’s business. He asked questions that caused Willy to talk more, without revealing anything about where the _Hiraeth _was going or had been, and didn’t reveal anything about their other cargo--or how little Mitch actually knew about the _ Hiraeth_. It let Naz look around a little more and concealed his own taciturnity.

Naz had actually never been to Rysm, and he highly suspected that was the reason Enzo had asked him to come. Enzo did business all over Taabi; the only reason he’d pick a location like this was to throw Naz off. That was alright; Naz hadn’t given him an arrival time and brought a stranger along, so Enzo was probably just as on edge.

While the rapid transit line took them almost an hour, it was only a few minutes’ walk from the local transit hub to the house that was apparently serving as Enzo’s headquarters. It was a clean, almost-sterile building in a similarly clean, almost-sterile part of the city. People bustled down the streets on their small personal transits, or they walked steadily past. It was a well-lived-in, unassuming part of town.

Willy breezed right into the building and showed them to a social area with stiff-backed couches and an ornate table that had suspiciously little wear and tear. The floor, smooth seamless stone, had no regular footpaths worn into it. This was not a house people had lived in recently or comfortably, despite the appearances Ennis was trying to put up.

“Enzo is around here somewhere,” Willy told them, draping himself over one of the chairs. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I think we’re fine,” Naz said. “We’re here for business.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a snack. I think we have some Tierran tea in the kitchen. Probably something Gylashi for your kid.”

Mitch gave Willy an utterly unimpressed look. Willy just grinned back.

“How was the trip?” Willy asked, still splayed over the couch. He didn’t sit up when someone came into the run, cutting off any reply Naz could have had. It wasn’t Enzo, but it was someone Naz recognized as one of his associates. Naz had no clue of the name, but he had bright orange hair.

“Tyler’s on his way down,” the man said. “You brought a friend, Naz?”

“I brought my new mechanic, yes,” Naz told him flatly. “He wanted to see Rysm.”

Willy snorted. “There’s nothing in Rysm worth seeing.”

“Hi, sorry, I got caught up this morning,” Enzo said, walking into the room. “How’ve you been, Kadri?”

“Be better if you were on time,” Naz said. He didn’t bother standing up; Mitch followed his lead and stayed seated. “Otherwise I’m ready to get down to business. You said you wanted a favor?”

“Willy, you want to show Mitch here around?” Enzo asked in lieu of a direct reply. 

Naz turned and saw the blond grinning at him. 

“I’d love to,” Willy said, smirking. “He’s adorable.”

Naz thought about pushing it and insisting Mitch stay, but he was also interested in seeing what Enzo would say without a stranger present.

“I would really rather stay with Naz,” Mitch retorted bluntly, so apparently he was thinking along similar lines as Naz. “Or I can just sit somewhere. You don’t have to show me anywhere.”

Enzo snorted. “Willy doesn’t bite. He’ll flirt, but the only person he’s dangerous to is himself.”

Naz gave Willy a long look. “If Mitch comes back broken, I’ll break something equivalent.”

“I’m not gonna break your kid, relax,” Willy retorted. “I'm not dumb, I know your reputation.” He stood and stretched. “C’mon, Mitch, I’ve got this tour guide thing down.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz’s meeting stretched long into the evening; Willy had shown Mitch the city, pointing out the regional differences in architecture and throwing in some city history once he figured out Mitch enjoyed that kind of thing.

“I grew up in a bunch of places,” Willy was saying, dipping a spoon into the warm, custardy sweet he’d purchased. Mitch had already forgotten the name. “But I’ve been on Taabi for about two years now, and in Rysm for the last six months. My younger brother is on a circulating language station between Aslyine and Marches; he’s studying an Earth language family called Germanic.”

Mitch stirred his own custard; like Willy’s, his was warm, but unlike Willy’s, his had bits of caramelized sugar and nuts. “I grew up on Sykkin. This is the first planet I’ve ever been to other than my home planet.”

“Oh man,” Willy said. “The domes must be tripping you out, then.”

Mitch looked up at the dome far above their heads, hexagonal glass panels gone opaque with the night. The edges glowed with power, the lighting as bright as if it were still day. “I’m getting used to it.”

“I bet.” Willy hummed and took another spoonful of his custard. “Naz is a good guy. I bet it took you forever to convince him to let you fly with him.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mitch said, deciding not to tell Willy how he’d gotten his position as the Hiraeth ship mechanic. “Harder than getting into university for sure.”

Willy cackled. There was something open and genuine about his expression that Mitch liked.

They finished their sweets in quiet companionship, Willy licking the back of his spoon to get the last little bit off.

“Well,” Willy said, taking Mitch’s bowl and collapsing it back into his bag along with his own. “I guess I can run you down to the entertainment district.”

Mitch wasn’t sure if the gleam in Willy’s eyes was excited or malicious; he definitely wasn’t sure if _entertainment district _was a euphemism or not.

They started walking in that direction, hopping on one of the rapid transit lines. Willy kept pointing out more bits of city architecture right up until his comm beeped.

“Oh, Enzo and Naz are done,” Willy said. “Damnit, we’re almost downtown. It’ll take us ages to get back out there.”

Mitch sighed out a little bit of relief and followed Willy back onto the transit line, now in the other direction.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Mitch waited until they were on the mag-lev back to the capital the next morning to ask questions. “How was it?”

Naz was frowning, clearly mulling something over. “Enzo called in a favor,” he said finally. “I'm not sure how I feel about it. Something seems...off.”

“With Enzo?”

“With everyone there. I don’t think it was because I brought someone unexpected, but...maybe that’s it.”

Mitch slumped in his seat, practically watching the thoughts cross Naz’s face. “So what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to fulfill my favor and deliver his shipment exactly as he asked me to, and I'm going to put out a few feelers. You don't get far in my line of business without being careful, but you also don't get far if you don't have people you can trust.”

Mitch hummed noncommittally. “If you don’t trust him, why are you doing it?”

“I didn’t say I don’t trust him,” Naz said. “I’m just not sure I understand his motives at the moment, which is almost the same thing.”

Mitch had a strange twist to his lips, mulling that over.

“Still--why do it?”

Naz sighed. “Sometimes, something perks your antennae up, and you think there are monsters in the shadows waiting to bite, and when you turn around there was never anything there. If I lived my whole life refusing to have faith in the people around me, and refusing to do anything except what I was entirely, completely sure of, I would never do anything at all.”

They got back to the ship late, finding John sitting on the open cargo bay, drinking from a faceted blue glass bottle and watching foot traffic pass by. Jazzy sat next to him, primly cleaning her paws.

“How was Rysm?” he asked, setting the bottle down. “Did you have a good time?”

Naz shrugged, raising his eyebrows at his husband. “It was interesting,” he replied. “Mitch liked the mag-lev.”

John, quick as ever, caught that Naz didn’t want to discuss the trip in the open. “Did you get to try any local food?”

“I did,” Mitch said. “We brought you back some kind of sweet. I think it’s made from tree sap.”

“Oh, like maple candy?” John asked. 

Mitch blinked, looking baffled. “Maple?”

Naz cracked up, leaving John to explain. “It’s a Terran tree. They take sap, boil it, and then cool it and stretch it to make a kind of chewy sweet. Or they dehydrate it and make a type of sugar out of it. I’m guessing there’s nothing comparable on Sykkin?”

“We make a sweetener out of powdered minerals,” Mitch informed them. “You make sugar out of _tree sap?_ Regularly?”

“Sometimes we make it out of beets,” Naz said, grinning, and then John had to explain beet sugar and cane sugar to Mitch because Naz couldn’t stop wheezing with laughter at the look on Mitch’s face.


	3. SPACETIME: TAABI TO AVYLINE

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: TAABI TO AVYLINE**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

One of John’s favorite things was when _Hiraeth _was mostly empty and Naz wandered around tinkering with his ship, singing softly down the echoing halls.

Naz’s birth station had been a language and cultural preservation station; as a result, Naz had grown up surrounded by gorgeously complex languages that were fading out of usage. John had only met Naz’s parents twice, but he’d picked up enough to realize that the songs Naz sang were ones his mom had when he was little.

John didn’t understand the words or recognize the language. Naz had long since explained that it was a mostly extinct language, preserved for its aesthetic and cultural value as Tierran language.

“What’s he singing?” Mitch asked, coming into the common area with his tablet. As was almost guaranteed these days, Jazzy trailed behind him, her tail aloft like a flag.

“Something his mom used to sing,” John said quietly, not wanting his voice to echo. “One of the languages revivalists tried to preserve. It's called English.”

“Old song, then.”

“Yeah, dates to far back beyond the Great Expansion. A thousand years pre spaceflight. Another thousand before humans inhabited another planet.”

Mitch sat next to John and set about tapping on the tablet’s screen. Naz kept wandering through the ship, tinkering and singing. At some point, he switched from pre-Common into Common and started singing pop songs, but John still liked to listen.

“We’re picking up a friend of ours off of Aysline,” John said. “Name of Auston Matthews. He’s a passenger rather than a crew member this time around, but I’ll bet you like him. Well, I hope you do, since he takes on as a spare handler and pilot sometimes.”

“What’s he like?” Mitch asked. He folded his legs up under him. “Your friend.”

“He’s Drakkan.”

“A dragon?” Mitch looked doubtful. “Those don’t actually exist.”

“Tell that to the geneticists on Brmmi.” John shook his head. “No, he’s human. He’s from a planet called Ladon, which was named after a dragon from Earth mythology, like a lot of the first planets humans inhabited. Ladon was one of the early terraforming successes, changing the planet from a heavily nitrogen-based atmosphere into a more oxygenated one.”

There was a bright gleam in Mitch’s eyes that made John a little wary. “So no dragons?”

“Well, a type of lizard genetically modified to look like a dragon, those exist,” John said. “They’re too big to fit on a ship this size and they eat almost exclusively fresh fish and a specific type of plant from Brmmi, so don’t go getting any ideas.”

Mitch drooped a little. “Are we ever going by Brmmi?”

“Not if I can help it,” Naz said cheerfully, breezing into the room. He bussed John on the cheek and scooped up Jazzy, scratching her under the chin. “Not when there’s still a warrant out for JT there.”

John pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was hoping to forget that chapter of my life, Nazem.”

“Too bad, it’s one of my favorite stories. Someone here got blindingly drunk at his bachelor party and proceeded to tell anyone who would sit still long enough how much he loved me, and when someone tried to tell him to shut up he punched them and started a bar brawl.”

John covered his eyes with his hands. “You don’t have to finish this story.”

“Oh, I definitely do. So, planetary police come and mop everyone up and pour them into the drunk tank, and John, being the idiot he is, breaks out of jail drunk, stumbles onto my ship and demands we get out of the atmosphere, and I, being the best fiancé ever, do so--and then I find out from my scanner that there’s a warrant out for him for being drunk and disorderly.”

“It was six years ago,” John said. “It's probably expired by now.”

Naz snickered. He set Jazzy down, saying “and yet you refuse to even enter that sector if you can avoid it. We had to get married three planets away.”

Mitch was openly laughing at them.

“Anyways,” John said loftily. “We’re picking up our friend Auston near Avyline. He’ll be on board for maybe two weeks, and he’s--about your age, I think, if we calculate to galactic standard ages. Otherwise, he’s twenty-three planetary years on Ladon, which is twenty-one by galactic standard. I think that works out to about seventeen on Sykkin if my math is right.”

Mitch was looking between them. “How old are you guys?”

“Don’t even go there,” John told Mitch wearily. “Too damn old, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Twenty-eight,” Naz was mouthing at Mitch. “Old man.”

John reached over and flicked Naz in the ear; in return, Naz went to pinch at his sides and it quickly devolved into a wrestling match with Mitch egging them both on.

It might not have been the family John had planned on when he was younger, but it was certainly shaping up to a family nonetheless, certainly even better than his plans had ever accounted for. Then Naz licked his ear, and John took it all back.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz was the only one awake when they lowered into Avyline’s atmosphere. The ‘ponics had freaked out again twenty-six standard hours prior, threatening to freeze over and then scorch. While the majority of their oxygen came from an air recycler and they did have enough stored food, the ‘ponics were important for a lot of other, non-essential reasons. If they’d seemed hopeless, Naz would have put in to actually land on Avyline, rather than only doing an atmo pickup.

Thankfully, Mitch was able to jury-rig a solution, but only long enough for an electric destabilization. The backup systems kicked in like they were supposed to, but the following power surge when everything kicked back on moved everything out of place. Cargo, ladders, and walls alike all slid haphazardly, and it had taken all three of them to get everything back in place and check that nothing would be hazardous for oxygen-based lifeforms.

As soon as they’d started landing protocol, Mitch had excused himself to get his first sleep in thirty-seven standard hours. He looked exhausted, so Naz didn’t even try to keep him awake long enough to meet Auston. He hoped Jazzy was sleeping on Mitch’s chest, so he wouldn’t try to move even if he did awaken somehow.

John had valiantly tried to stay awake since Auston was one of his closest friends, not counting his husband, but he’d fallen asleep in the copilot’s seat before they even hit atmosphere.

Naz was only functioning because of his energy injections, the ones he refused to share because they were a) tailored to his personal body chem and b) almost certainly lethal without the three year acclimatization period.

He greeted the atmospheric shuttle, let them dock and Auston board before resuming the autopilot program. As the _Hiraeth _started to exit the atmosphere, Naz left the cockpit and went to hug Auston.

“Been awhile,” Auston said, squeezing tightly. “Good to see you.”

Naz stepped back to get a look at Auston: he was growing a beard at the moment, and he’d lost some of the bulk in his shoulders since Naz had last seen him. He had one trunk of belongings and a bag slung over his shoulder, and the only thing Naz could think of was that he had never looked so _young_.

“Same. Sorry everyone’s kind of down right now, we’ve had a long shipday.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Welcome aboard, we have a cabin pulled out for you, I need to go the fuck to sleep.”

Auston looked amused. “What happened on your rust bucket this time?”

“You won’t find a speck of rust on the _Hiraeth,_ take that back. We, uh, had a dual ‘ponics experiment that accidentally shorted and destabilized grav fields. We were at a quarter power for a few hours, and let me tell you, bolting crates back down is not fun when your grav is wobbly. All fixed now, though, should’ve known not to put the ‘ponics power generator on the same one as the primeline grav.”

Auston shook his head. “Get mag boots.”

“Have those, really fucking not worth it.” Naz yawned and scrubbed his hands down his face. “Creator-Maker, I’m tired. John fell asleep in the cockpit.”

“Go to bed. New mechanic down too?”

“Out like a lightbulb.” Naz yawned again. “Sorry to abandon you. We’ve got the same cabin as last time pulled out for you. Mitchy was in it for a while but we shifted him over to the mechanics bay and quarters at our last port.”

Auston snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first time I had time to kill. I can get settled in and catch up on my soaps.”

“Tell me how the _ Young and the Spaceless _ finale goes, I haven’t decided if I’m gonna watch it yet.”

“I was joking and you should go to sleep right now.”

“Great idea,” Naz said. He saluted wryly and went to rouse John from the cockpit so they could sleep in an actual bed.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz woke up a good sleep later. He disentangled himself from John and checked his chronometer; they had passed eleven standard hours since their last atmospheric departure, so that was approximately how long he’d slept.

“God bless caffeine,” he murmured and started their little caf-maker.

Technically he could get up and use the big kitchen, but he didn’t feel like putting on pants and the little cafmaker above the desk worked fine. As captain, his cabin had a little cabinet with a fold-out kitchenette that could make the most basic of things, but the only thing he ever used was the caf maker.

John was a fiend when it came to the dark blue Poyivrni caf, and Naz guarded his stash jealously. It was John’s favorite, which meant Naz almost never set it out for guests. It was really goddamn hard to find the real stuff, and not an imitation full of navy dye.

True to form, John woke up at the scent of it.

“Caf?”

“Yup.” Naz filled the cup and sealed the thin plastic sheet over the top to prevent spills. He passed the cup to John and made a cup for himself, lightened with cream.

“Auston here?”

“Yup.”

John took a deep pull of caf, sighing deeply when he set the cup down. “Did you finally get Mitch to sleep?”

“He passed out before I did, so I’m not sure if he’s up or not.” Naz stretched, yawning. “I needed that.”

John was watching Naz with soft, sleepy eyes. “I worry about you when that kind of thing happens.”

“Well, it’s either fix it or die, so--” Naz shrugged and drank his own caf. “There’s only so much I can do to keep us from dying.”

“We could hire someone else on.”

Naz raised an eyebrow. “We already have Mitchy.”

“This ship was designed for four crew, and you know it.”

“Once Auston is up to speed, we’ll have four crew.”

“You’ll have two crew, a part-timer, and me,” John corrected. “Naz, this isn’t sustainable. You can’t keep doing eighteen-hour shifts, you’re going to burn out.”

Naz sighed. “And who do you suggest we bring on? One of your assassin buddies who have their own work to do? One of my smuggler friends who would turn tail and run if they knew they were working with one of the Republic's deadliest men? A random person who doesn't know what they’re walking into?”

“Mitch has worked out.”

“Mitch isn't guaranteed to stay on once we return to Sykkin. He’s temporary and you know it.”

Naz set his cup down with a heavy thump. “Well, when you have solutions and not more problems I'll be glad to hear it, but right now this is what it is.”

John exhaled, then leaned over to give Naz a placatory kiss. “Alright. But keep it in mind. Maybe we'll find someone we can hire on.”

Naz carded his fingers through John's hair. “I appreciate your concern. I don’t mean to snap, but you have to admit there’s not much else we can do.”

John gave Naz a soft kiss, and then they went to find their shipmates.

Auston was lounging in the ship’s common area; watching something on his tablet. “Hey, good morning,” he said, lifting a hand in greeting. His nose wrinkled as he took am exaggerated sniff. “Is that Poyivrni caf? And you’re not sharing?”

“You could have brought your own,” John shot back. He set his cup on the table and went to start breakfast. “Pancakes alright with everyone?”

“Only if we have real butter,” Naz said. He dropped into the seat next to Auston, stretching his legs out.

John laughed. “You’re in luck; we stocked up pretty well last time we were on Terra Prima.”

“Mm, butter,” Naz said dreamily.

The three of them chatted, catching up as John mixed up the batter and started making pancakes. He made them Tierran-style, thin sheets of cooked batter, smeared with butter and rolled up for serving. Naz would inevitably drown them in a sweet syrup of some sort, but John preferred to sprinkle them with salt. Auston would eat anything put in front of him, they’d discovered.

Naz was doing most of the talking, telling Auston all about their life since they’d last seen him in person. It had been about six months, more or less; a few times they’d been in similar orbits, but not close enough to justify meeting up. By the time Naz got to Sykkin in the retelling, Auston was asking clarifying questions.

“So tell me about your new mechanic,” Auston said, finally setting aside his tablet.

“Meet him yourself,” Naz said easily. “Mitch!”

“I think he’s still sleeping, and your voice wouldn’t carry that far anyway,” John told him, rolling up another pancake. “Try the comm.”

“Oh, shit, yeah.”

Naz leaned over and buzzed the intercom panel, opening a link to Mitch’s room.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Mitch mumbled over the comms. “Mornmeal?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Your friend is here, right?” Mitch yawned into the speaker. “On my way down. See you in a minute.”

“He sounds nice,” Auston said mildly.

“He’s a good kid,” JT replied. “Hey, Naz, give me a hand carrying the pancakes over to the table?”

“Yeah, no worries.” Naz carried the carafe of tea JT had brewed over to the table while JT carried the first plate of pancakes “So, Auston, how’s life planetside going for you?”

Four things happened very fast: Mitch came stumbling into the room, yawning; Auston drew his neutrino blaster; John dropped the plate of pancakes; and Naz was suddenly _very awake._

“Holy _shit,_ Auston!” John shouted. Naz shoved Mitch behind him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“That’s the missing prince,” Auston hissed. The little red target dot stayed right between Mitch’s eyes. “The one you failed to kill, John.”

Mitch shied back; the target dot moved with him. His eyes were wide and he’d gone pale.

“You’ve gone insane,” Naz snapped just as John shook his head.

“That’s not the princeling, that’s _Mitch,_ Auston, what the fuck? You can’t just pull a gun on an orphan!”

“Orphan be damned, he’s _ supposed _to be dead!”

Within a blink, Naz had pinned Auston against the wall. Auston’s neutrino went spinning across the floor.

“You didn’t just threaten my mechanic,” he said. His tone was light, completely opposite of the way he was slowly adding pressure to Auston’s throat. “John, go get the handcuffs. Both pairs.”

“But--”

“John, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut off his airway right now. Go get the damn handcuffs.”

John shrugged and went to find the restraints. Mitch edged towards the weapon and reached for it to flick the safety back on, shaking but expression determined.

“Don’t touch that, it’s linked to Auston’s fingerprints. You touch it without his permission and it’ll blow up,” Naz snapped.

Auston had the audacity to look surprised that Naz knew that.

“Where did you--”

“Learn how to do that?” Naz smiled grimly. “You don’t get far being a smuggler without knowing your shit. And you don’t survive long married to a Republic Special Forces agent without being able to take care of yourself.” He paused. “Auston, since I like you, I’m gonna let you know that if you keep trying to get your knee out so you can flip me, I’m going to break it, and your other one for good measure. You might get my wrist, but trust me, I will let your gun blow us all to hell before I let you shoot Mitch.”

Auston grumbled and went still.

“What,” Mitch said shrilly. “The fuck is going on?”

“John was supposed to kill you,” Auston said just as Naz gritted out, “I'll explain when Auston isn’t trying to kill us all.”

“You know, detaining a Republic official is a major offense,” Auston said after a beat of silence. 

Naz grunted. “There are at least three planetary courts that’ll agree with me on this one, Republic official position be damned. I have the right to take you to any of them since I’m not planetborn. Rules out here are different, Auston. You’re not killing my mechanic.”

John returned with the handcuffs. “Sorry, Auston, I’ve got to side with my husband on this one.”

“Please tell me those aren’t sex handcuffs.”

“How much do you want us to lie to you?” John asked cheerfully. “They’re sterile though, I promise.”

“Right. Clearly, we need to be having a conversation,” Naz said, once Auston was securely bound. “And John? Passenger quarters. Indefinitely.”

“I didn’t do anything!” John yelped. “I’m on your side! Killing Mitch would be bad!”

“You must have done _ something _.”

“He followed orders,” Auston put in. “You can’t blame him for that.”

Naz scowled. “Depends on the orders.”

“Seriously,” Mitch said, voice reaching octaves Naz wasn’t sure any human had ever reached before. “What the _ fuck _?”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

It took a bit of shuffling to get everyone situated around the table. John secured Auston in the handcuffs and produced an extra set of electro-restraints to seal around Auston’s neck.

Naz sat Mitch down as far away from Auston as he could and still keep the two at the same table, and dropped a pot over Auston’s neutrino, to be handled at some other time. This way no one would accidentally trip over it and blow them all to kingdom come.

Jazzy appeared, sniffed the air, and curled up on Mitch’s lap, eyeing the rest of them with an air of feline disdain.

“John works for the Republic of United Systems as a special forces agent,” Naz explained, putting the kettle back on to heat so he had something to do with his hands. On the table between them, the pancakes that had survived the chaos were rapidly cooling, the melted butter congealing in a completely unappealing manner. “As part of his cover story, I have contacts with smugglers and other illegal dealings. Most of my work is legitimate trading, but when John needs information or I need to maintain my cover, the Republic looks the other way.”

“So Enzo’s favor?”

“Completely illegal,” John confirmed. “There's a suspicious amount of trackers in the shipment, so either Enzo doesn't trust us or he has a reason to want to know where we are.”

“And what about you, little mouse?” Auston drawled. “I'm an assassin like John here, for what it's worth.”

“He's our mechanic,” Naz stressed, slamming mugs onto the table.

“You didn't notice how he angled his body to protect his vulnerable spots? Boy’s had training against assassination attempts.”

“His mom dropped him off at our ship herself,” Naz snapped. “And that was _ definitely _ not the queen of Sykkin.”

“He's right, though,” Mitch said softly. “I am the prince, but I was in the care of a foster mother. I can't prove it, though. I left everything identifying behind.”

Naz groaned. “I was giving you an out,” he hissed. “Mitch, don't ever tell anyone that, ever again.”

The tea kettle whistled: the prince, two assassins, and a very tired Naz turned to the source of the noise.

“I feel like there's a joke to be made here,” Auston said lazily, watching Mitch.

“No one here has any proof that anyone is who they say they are,” John said firmly. “Innocent until proven otherwise.”

“No one has any reason to lie,” Auston retorted. “And we're all in this mess together now.”

“You're not in any mess as far as I can tell.” Naz plopped teabags into the mugs and poured hot water into all of them. “And I'm not giving you tea because there's no way you could drink it, Auston.”

“I figured.”

Naz sighed, finally taking his seat. “Well, now that all the big secrets are on the table, what are we going to do? John, you start. What job were you on when we were landed on Sykkin?”

John shrugged. “Orders were to take out top-level government. Wasn’t just me on it, not even close. It was a big op, I don’t know everyone involved or everything that was going on, all I know is what I was ordered.”

Auston nodded, still eyeing Mitch. “Layers, so there’s less room to fuck up a planetwide op.”

“I was on monarchy detail,” John continued. “I had the two princes in the capital. Someone else had the parents. A third was across the planet as backup.”

Auston’s hands were on the table, bound at the wrist. “Make sure they’re good and dead, and make it look like internal rebellion. Contacts were inciting riots, and placing explosives to destroy any and all evidence.”

“The Republic needs Sykkin to come to heel. Sykkin’s too valuable and they weren’t cooperating.” John met Mitch’s eyes. “It wasn’t a personal fight the Republic was picking. Sykkin’s one of the best trade ports in the galaxy, and the Republic needed to give them a push. I follow orders.” He met Naz’s eyes next. “I follow orders, Naz.”

“That explains what should’ve happened. That doesn’t explain Mitch being here, or why--if Auston’s not absolutely lost his nut--a prince survived.”

“I can answer that,” Mitch said quietly. He’d been quietly listening to their explanations and Naz startled to hear his voice. “You think I didn’t know we’d end up dead? We knew people wanted to join the Republic. Mom thought we should try to form an alliance, but Dad--Dad doesn’t...Dad didn’t trust a galaxy-wide government. Said there was no way anyone could run a system that big without hurting people, and maybe a monarchy wasn’t the best way either, but at least we were close enough to see the damage we did first-hand.” 

John looked across the table and realized Mitch was crying, even though his voice betrayed nothing. Wordlessly, he slid a napkin across the table to Mitch, who ignored it in favor of using his sleeves to wipe his tears away.

“Mom said he’d get us all killed, and no one disagreed. Not even him.” Mitch sighed deeply. He rubbed at his cheeks, looking flushed and exhausted. Jazzy licked at his wrist. “I was put in foster and my double stepped in; we’re virtually identical. He went into hiding. We didn't think anything would actually happen. I’m the second child. The spare, traditionally. The spare, the scholar. I don’t--I don’t know how to rule, that was always going to fall to my older brother and his children. But...with my family dead, it’s technically my duty to step up and rule.”

“But?” Naz asked, hearing the hesitancy. “But what?”

“People think I’m dead. The Republic may have wanted Sykkin to come to heel, but that’s not how Sykkin will react. This was an act of terrorism from the Republic, and any interim government will refuse to treat with the Republic, even after the next line is chosen from the Book of Blood.”

Everyone fell silent, exchanging dubious looks. It was Austin who piped in with “I’m sorry, the _ what _?”

“Book of Blood. It’s nanotech...you know what, not important. It picks the next ruling line if an entire family is massacred. Killing the whole royal family will just act as a catalyst to strengthen the Sykkian system.”

Naz nodded. “People who liked the Republic will now think of them as bloody killers, willing to slay anyone who disagrees with them.”

“So what do we do now?” Auston asked. He’d slacked against the cuffs, no longer even darting glances at his weapon or Mitch. “We can’t just parade him around. And since you won’t let me kill him...were you planning on being outlaws for the rest of forever?”

“I mean--” Naz started, clearly trying to joke. John elbowed his husband in the gut.

“We didn’t know he was the prince until you came bursting in, and I’ll bet anything the Republic doesn’t know he’s here either. The file I had used a three-dee, a good one. The boy I killed had DNA that matched the file. I killed Sykkin’s prince, according to Republic files. This is Mitch Marner, our ship’s mechanic.”

Auston sighed. “The Republic knows he’s not dead. They have to.”

“The file was wrong, which means they don’t know.”

“How--how could the Republic have gotten the wrong information?” Naz asked, frowning. “I’ve seen their file on me--oh, don’t give me that look, Auston, once I married John you knew he was going to show me the file, and my clearance before reassigning to the Reservists was high as any of yours--but it has stuff even I didn’t know about myself. On a planet’s royals, with whom they don’t get along? How the hell could it possibly be inaccurate? They’d know what he looked like.”

John bit his lip. “That’s a--that’s a good point.” He thought for a second. “Two options: the Sykkians replaced Mitch’s file with that of a stand-in--”

“If they did, I don’t know about it beyond my double, and you said it didn't look like me.” Mitch cut in.

“--or the Republic themselves put in a false file.”

“Shit,” Auston said. “Plan 439.”

John’s eyes went wide. “Plan 439.”

Naz slammed his hands down on the table. “Someone explain to the non-secret agents in the room what the hell plan 439 is?”

“Internal dissolution of a government through citizen non-confidence,” John said, staring at Mitch.

“Exactly. I’m the secondson, not meant to rule. But if I showed up...alive?”

“Everyone would rally behind you,” John said. His forehead furrowed. “Fuck. The Republic _wanted_ you to survive. A secondson, unknowing of how to rule competently...that could cause an actual civil war, ten years down the line. Plan 439: citizen non-confidence. The planet would fall into political chaos under an incompetent leader, and the Republic would step in, far enough into the chaos that people would forget they were suspected of murdering the royal family a decade back. They wanted the least dangerous Marner to survive.”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Not actually our surname.”

John hand waved it away. “Explains a lot.”

Naz whistled through his teeth. “Explains the flubbed file. Wrong three-dee, wrong DNA--John carried out the right assignment on the right person. He was never actually supposed to kill Mitch. Auston, you figured out on your own that John got the wrong person, right?”

“You’re...not wrong,” Auston admitted. “You know what the agency does to failures.”

John leaned back in his seat. “Well, fuck.”

Naz raised his eyebrows. “Good summary of the situation in two words.”

Auston sighed deeply. “Can I be released from the sex handcuffs now?”

“No.”

“I’m not gonna kill him.”

Naz raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Seriously, if it’s against orders, I’m really not going to do it.”

“We don’t know if it’s against orders yet,” Naz said, staring Auston down. “And it's not like you can call in to check.”

Auston just shrugged loosely. “You could try it.”

“Uh, yeah, no.”

The room lapsed into silence as everyone processed the new information. Mitch was, strangely enough, the most relaxed of all of them. Auston kept giving him long looks while Mitch kept sipping his tea unconcernedly. John had a furrow in his forehead that implied he was working through plan after plan after plan, and Naz himself was debating the merits of taking the ship entirely off the grid, dropping Auston off on a mostly-abandoned moon somewhere, and fleeing to non-Republic space just to get out of this whole mess.

It wouldn’t be easy, but Morgan Rielly owed Naz a favor, and if Naz couldn’t scratch up a convincing false background for the entire _Hiraeth _and everyone on board, he was losing his touch. Sykkin was on the edge of Republic space, but if they went a little further, into worlds like Edmo or Vylli, they’d be mostly out of the Republic’s reach and still within what was considered civilized space. If they went further, they could join the legions of explorers and find a quieter planetary backwater to settle down on. John might be a hard sell, but if Mitch was committed to not being a prince any longer, he’d probably be easier to convince. Losing the _Hiraeth _would be rough, but doable. It would just be a matter of getting Auston not to talk, and Naz had a permanent--if severe--option for that.

Auston broke the silence. “Okay, question.”

Mitch glanced at Auston warily. Auston was still handcuffed but he was relaxed into his chair as if he were lounging by choice rather than necessity.

“Answer?”

“Book of Blood. Your…people’s nanotech. It picks a new leader?”

Mitch cocked his head to the side. “Um. Yeah.”

“How?”

“I’m—I can’t actually explain that. I don’t know how it works, just that it does. It’s…an old tradition. All Sykkian citizens give blood annually. It’s half religion, half politics, but anyways a little of that blood is always siphoned off, for the next test. A drop, no more. It’s added to the Book, and an algorithm so old no one knows how to unravel it does the rest.” Mitch shrugged, then tucked his legs underneath him. “My whole family had our blood chosen by the Book. If it rejected us, we were unfit to lead and denied any position of power.”

John frowned, considering Mitch. “Genetic markers ruling out genetic madness?”

“Well, you have to be a good person too. It rules out people who are corrupt, which isn’t genetic in any way, shape, or form. My aunt, my father’s sister, she was supposed to be queen since she was firstdaughter. But the Book refused her, and later we found out…well, she wasn’t a good person. I don’t know how blood or DNA could determine that. Not in advance, anyways. I first passed when I turned fourteen. Uh, planetary years. I’m not sure how that translates to standard years.”

“That’s about…nineteen standard years, and then a bit,” John said. “That’s incredible tech.”

“Why do you think we guard it against the Republic? All citizens give blood to be tested, but not even they know why. No one knows how the Book works, except that it’s been successful for the past millennia.”

“So…will the Book then know you’re still alive?” Auston asked. “That’s what I was getting at.”

Mitch shook his head. “No, it’s cleared away every time. My father was continuously elected king by the Book. He could never fail as ruler, or else the Book would pick someone else. He couldn’t earn back approval, either. Once rejected, you’re…well, you can never be given the power back.”

“So it’s not like a running list of who’s alive and who’s not, then?”

“No. The Book only picks from what’s available to it. If my blood isn’t added to the Book this time around, it won’t put me into the pool to be picked.” He shrugged. “As a Sykkian citizen, I’ll be called to give my blood next Starsrise. If I submit it, I could be picked, because I’m the last of a line who has proven to devote itself to Sykkin. That’s not guaranteed. Some other citizen could always be more fit.”

“How the hell has this escaped the Republic’s notice?”

Mitch shifted in his seat, running his fingers along the edge of the table. “My family has been held responsible by the Book for two hundred years, and the Republic wasn’t in contact with us for that long. Even before that, our last leadership change was a hundred years before that, and everyone who knows how the ruler is chosen isn’t exactly going to tell anyone about it. It’s relatively secret, even to the people.”

“We aren’t sworn to secrecy,” Auston pointed out.

“You don’t have to be. Who’d believe you?” Mitch said. “The prince is dead. I really am just Mitch Marner now. Unless and until the Book chooses me, and unless and until Bonnie reclaims me…who’d believe that the prince of Sykkian told you himself?”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: AVYLINE TO TERRA BETA**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz found Mitch fussing over the ‘ponics system, Jazzy sitting amongst some Tierran greens and purring loudly. Auston and John were talking in the kitchen, talking game plans. For the moment, it seemed Auston had no more desire to kill Mitch, and at the very least he’d willingly put his blaster into John’s tri-locked safe with no fuss.

“You know, ‘ponics systems are dead weight on most modern ships,” Naz said, leaning against the door frame.

Mitch startled, narrowly avoiding smashing his head in on a tray of microgreens.

“They are?”

“Mm. Early Tierran spaceflight sent plants up as part of biology experiments. They'd never lived without gravity and weren't sure what would happen to living things up here long term.”

“They didn't grow them for food?”

“Not at the beginning. It was a side effect, not the cause.” Naz pushed off the wall and came to crouch beside Mitch. “Turns out, they're not that great for air recycling, either. You'd need way more than what we've got here for any one of us, much less a ship at full capacity. Too impractical. Mechanical air recyclers do the job much better than a room full of plants. They're dead weight.”

“So why keep them around?”

“They made humans happy. No, seriously, that's it. A bit of natural greenery in the darkness of space did things for crew morale nothing else did.”

Mitch looked at Naz like he’d lost his mind. “Okay?”

“We like having you around. We're not going to kick you off if you don't do your job. If you set my ship on fire we’ll be having words, but John and I like the company. If you want us to leave you somewhere so you can start a new life, we will, but you are welcome here as long as you’d like to be.”

“I don’t want to make trouble for the rest of you.”

Naz snorted. “John’s an assassin. I’m a part-time smuggler. We make our own trouble, Mitch. You’re no more trouble than anyone else we know. Honestly, we need the extra hands.”

“If they figure out I’m alive, I don’t--I don’t know what will happen,” Mitch said. He fiddled with the cuffs of his sweater, picking at a loose thread. “What were the odds that I ended up here?”

“If you’d gotten on any other ship, anything could have happened,” Naz admitted. “I don’t know what would have happened, and I don’t put a lot of faith in destiny, but I do think this is where you were meant to be.”

Mitch chuffed out a breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “You’re married to the man who was supposed to kill me.”

“And I’ll kick him out the airlock if he tries to kill my mechanic.” Naz smiled wryly. “You know I served in the Republic’s military, right?”

Mitch nodded once, jerkily. “In theory, yeah.”

“You ever wonder why I left?”

Mitch looked uncomfortable. “I never wanted to ask.”

Naz sighed. “I did two five-year tours of duty, and I got to see a lot of the universe outside of the station I grew up on. I left because they wanted me to take on a position similar to John’s, and I asked a few too many questions. I left honorably, but a lot of people weren’t very happy with me. John stayed on, but in his line of work there isn’t really a way out but death. The government would kill him if he tried.”

“And you worked for them?”

“The Republic has done a lot of people wrong, and a lot of people right. I wouldn’t have John if it weren't for the Republic, but a hell of a lot of people on Sykkin would have their lives. On the other hand, the Republic protects the people and planets it governs, when it's not waging war. When I worked for them, it was the right thing to do, I thought. Now, especially knowing what they’re trying to do with Sykkin, I’m not so sure.” Naz tipped his head to the side and watched Mitch, the sweep of his eyelashes and the way he had rucked his jumpsuit sleeves up so he could dig in the soil with both hands. “There are a lot of things I don’t know, and as much faith as I have, sometimes it’s not meant to be put into other people. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

Mitch remained silent, brushing the dirt off of the leaves of a small mint plant.

“So, I guess what I’m saying is even though I have the most history with the Republic, and maybe the most reason to stand for it, I’ll support you in what you need to do. If you want to stay here, I’ll make sure Auston doesn’t give you any trouble. John won’t either. If you want to slip off onto a planet that’s never heard of Sykkin, I’ll get you the ID and documentation you need. And if you want to belt Auston in the eye, I’ll distract him long enough you can get a good one in.”

Mitch smiled at that. “I don’t think he’ll hurt me.”

Naz boggled. “He tried to _ shoot you _ on _ sight _.”

“I have a good feeling about him,” Mitch countered. “And he clearly cares about you and JT.”

“He tried to _ kill you _.”

“I think I should point out that it was John’s job to kill me,” Mitch said. “As in, he thought he had killed me by the time you brought me on board the ship. I seem to be perfectly safe.”

Naz covered his eyes and groaned. “Do you have no self-preservation whatsoever?”

“I think I have a little more trust in destiny.” Mitch left the mint plant alone and looked Naz in the eyes. “Maybe you should too.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz threw his elbow back, slamming into John’s throat.

John wheezed and stumbled back, releasing his grip on Naz.

“You next, Mitch,” Naz instructed. “Try it on me.”

“I’m not hitting you.”

Naz huffed. “Look, you gotta know how to defend yourself, and I’m not letting you spar with Auston.”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Auston called from across the room.

“I still don’t trust either of you,” Naz called back. “Seriously, Mitch, you’re not going to do any damage we can’t reverse pretty quick.”

Mitch raised an eyebrow, looking wholly unimpressed. “I’m still not really comfortable with it--”

“It’s not about comfortable,” Naz cut in. “It’s about being able to defend yourself in the most basic situations.”

“I’ve never had issues before.”

Naz threw up his hands in the air. “John!”

“You were a prince with state of the art security and well-trained security teams surrounding you,” John said, somewhat gently. Across the room, Auston snorted and quickly busied himself with a series of push-ups when Naz turned to glare at him. “It wouldn’t hurt if you knew a few ways to get out of a pinch.”

“I’m on a ship with two assassins and a former soldier,” Mitch said. “I don’t know if anything you teach me is going to defend me against...well, you.”

“That’s not the _ point _.”

“Are you planning on ever leaving this ship again?” Auston called. Mitch turned to look at him, just as dubious as when he was talking to Naz. “Ever seeing anyone who isn’t currently on this ship? Because let me tell you, Naz likes having friends around. If John and Naz bring someone else on board, are you going to hide in the ‘ponics sector? If Naz docks to trade either planetside or in a station, are you going to stay locked up in your room the whole time? What if you go back to Sykkin? Are you going to just wait for something to happen in the streets?”

Mitch blinked. “I mean--”

“What if you meet someone and leave the Hiraeth? Or find another planet you think you’d like to live on--what will you do then?”

“I guess,” Mitch said slowly. “But what do you think I could learn well enough to actually be useful by the time we’d need it?”

“I think if you knew a few tricks it could buy enough time for one of us who knows more to get to you. And then it's a foundation to build on.”

“I want Auston to teach me,” Mitch said. He crossed the room and stood in front of Auston, arms folded across his chest. “If he’s okay with it, I mean.”

Naz gaped, then threw his hands up and stormed out of the room. Then he stormed back in with a helmet in his hands.

“I don’t trust either of you,” he snapped. “This is a dumb idea. You’re both dumb.”

“Did we only just now think of helmets?” Auston asked.

Naz threw the helmet at him, which Auston caught right before it hit him in the face. “Put the damn thing on. When you both get TBIs it won’t be because I didn’t warn you.”

“Why am I getting a helmet and not Mitch?” Auston asked, strapping the helmet on. It was clearly a sport helmet and not part of a breathing apparatus or anything more functional; the number inscribed at the nape gave no hint to what sport the helmet came from.

“Because you know how to pull your punches,” Naz snapped. “And Mitch doesn’t know his strength yet, and I know you’ll get a black eye. Put the visor on.”

Across the room, John was sipping from a canteen, watching the exchange with a grin on his face. “The first time Naz and I sparred he didn’t realize how hard his kick was going to hit me in the chest due to the planetary gravity we were each accustomed to at the time and nearly cracked one of my ribs. It’s coming from a place of love.”

Naz flapped his hand at John, batting at the air. “Hush.”

“We’ll be fine,” Mitch said. “Come on, Auston. Where do you need me?”

“This is going to end so badly,” Naz muttered and corrected Mitch’s stance. “Right, you’re going to want your hand braced like this to protect yourself from sprains--”


	4. PORT: KALULIKY, TERRA BETA

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: KALULIKY, TERRA BETA**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Terra Beta was not, for a lot of reasons, one of Naz’s favorite planets. 

He wasn’t a fan of the climate, which had been terraformed to mimic Terra Prime’s environment before humans had fucked up the environment. Naz, who liked his environment climate-controlled and as standardized as a spaceship could make it, was not fond of things like rain. Terra Beta rained quite a bit, especially at the equatorial landing sites.

John’s family also lived planetside on Terra Beta. They were very much grounders who liked their local existence, and who never traveled farther than across the planet. They lived in a small city of only a million or so people. While Naz got along pretty well with the entire Tavares family, they were also operating from different points of view and they quickly ran out of things in common to talk about.

Other than that, he mostly tolerated it. John loved visiting any part of Terra Beta, but he was very fond of Kaluliky; Naz loved things that made John happy.

He was not, however, very happy with the fact that someone on Terra Beta was almost definitely trying to kill him.

“We’ve got eyes on us,” Auston said lightly, looking down at his data chip and pulling up the time. “We have had, for as long as we’ve been in Kaluliky. If they’re Republic, they’re bad at it.”

Naz sighed deeply to himself. They’d only been on Terra Beta for maybe six standard hours, long enough for him to get themselves registered at the port and confirm where they were leaving Enzo’s cargo. Mitch had handled waste disposal, but he’d needed supplies before he could start in on maintenance work. Naz was already recalculating time frames in his head now.

“Do we have any idea who they want?” Naz asked. He was used enough to surveillance to not change his pace or turn to look around, no matter how much he wanted to. Auston was good at this, he reminded himself. He didn’t have John’s experience, but he was trained in the same system and knew his stuff.

“Judging by the fact that they didn’t blink when John and Mitch split off to find stuff for Mitch’s kit, I’m going to assume that they want one of us.” Auston stumbled a little over a rough patch of pavement, allowing Naz to slow down and take a peek around.

“And since I’m the one with an on-world delivery loaded with trackers, I’m going to assume it’s me they want,” Naz said, giving Auston a hand up. In that moment, Auston transferred a pill to Naz’s palm--charmingly, it seemed Auston didn’t think Naz had a plan B to save himself from torture or worse already on his person.

Naz pocketed the pill. “Do you think they want us alive or is this an assassination attempt?”

“We’re not important enough to be assassinated,” Auston retorted. “I think they’re waiting for a clear shot. If we go through downtown do you think it’ll be crowded enough to check if you’ve got a tracker on you without being seen?”

“I do know what I'm doing,” Naz said mildly. He'd already identified the most likely locations for a tracker to have been placed, and where on his person they'd have been stuck. “Do we want to split up and see if they try anything?”

Auston snorted. “John would kill me.”

“John just got an SOS ping and our coordinates. He’d know it wasn’t you.”

“Oh, no,” Auston said, as they turned the corner to head for one of the shopping streets rather than towards the warehouse district, as they had originally been planning. “He’d kill me for letting you get blood on your hands. I’m not worried about whatever assholes are coming for us, I’m worried about John reaming me out for making you more stressed than you already are.”

“To be honest, this is the least stressful part of my day.” As they stepped into an area with plenty of passers-by to block camera views and the sightlines of anyone following them, Naz skimmed his hand over the hem of his coat and plucked off a tracker, dropping it into the pocket of a random pedestrian heading the same way, hoping she wouldn’t notice for at least a few minutes. “Mitch wanted to cook mornmeal, and he’s got an interesting idea of what _cooked _means. You’re lucky you slept through it.”

“Totally raw?” Out of the corner of his eye, Naz saw Auston slip his own tracker onto the shirtsleeve of a businessman talking loudly on his comm.

“No, he thinks cooking happens by acid application rather than heat.”

Auston wrinkled his nose. “Does it?”

“The ingredients were cured by chemical interaction, but I wouldn’t call it a pleasant experience. Apparently it’s a foundation of the Sykkian cuisine favored in Canibrya, but since we never left Melbia, Mitch wants us to try it. Keep an eye out if he offers to cook.” Naz grimaced, feeling the phantom taste of acid in the back of his mouth. “Although you like sour things more than John or I do, so maybe you’ll like it. Mitch would be pleased anyways.”

At the next intersection, they turned; Auston’s businessman and Naz’s woman kept going straight. A second later, their tail passed them as well.

“Anyone else, you think?” Auston asked. They kept their sedate pace, not wanting to draw attention.

“Someone’s definitely caught on. Here, in here.” They stepped into a shop that sold Tierran sweets; the store smelled heavily of chocolate and caramel. Naz stopped to linger over a display of candied walnuts. They were expensive, but if they were really imported from Terra Prime, the price would be well worth it, since walnuts were one of the things John would wax rhapsodic about from his childhood.

“Is this the time?” Auston asked as Naz picked up the package to study it. At the same time, he pulled up a command on his wristchip screen, flicking his irises to confirm what he wanted to do. He put his hand on Auston’s shoulder.

“I owe John from a bet we made over Mitch’s ongoing war with shipside clothing.” Naz’s data chip blinked twice, the screen flickering, and then a microEMP shivered down Naz’s spine. The shock got Auston too, and Naz rolled his eyes when Auston jumped a little.

“Fuck,” Auston said.

“Definitely no bugs now. Do you think John wants the candied walnuts or the ones covered in chocolate?”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

When John got Naz’s SOS notification, he immediately redirected Mitch to a different location. While they were walking, he set an alert for the city watch’s scanners; if Naz and Auston decided to take their SOS into their own hands, city watch would certainly find out about it.

While he waited for further details, he started checking to make sure there weren’t any tails watching them. If someone was following Naz, it would not be out of the pale that they were also tracking anyone else on the _Hiraeth,_ and knowing Mitch’s secret made that probability all the more likely that someone was watching them.

He flagged a few pedestrians as suspicious, but no one was acting obviously like a tail. If someone really was out to get Naz, they were being sloppy about it.

They took a winding route back to the spaceport, confident they weren’t being followed. There were definitely eyes on the _Hiraeth _itself, though, so they met up with Naz and Auston a fair distance away from the _ Hiraeth _’s docking bay.

“What happened?” Mitch asked.

Auston mostly looked tired, but he looked more resigned to the situation than anything else. Naz offered John a tight smile, confirming that he was alright but displaying just how annoyed he was with this situation.

The port was bustling around them a Naz broke down what he and Auston had observed with their tails.

“I’m pretty certain it’s to do with Enzo’s cargo,” Nas said tiredly. “The question is why he’s suddenly got a problem with me.”

“Is it me?” Mitch asked. He’d taken the news of Naz and Auston’s stalker with an emotionless expression; John had to remind himself that Mitch had, in fact, grown up royalty. Assassination attempts would have been part of his usual, back in his princely life on Sykkin. “Do...do they know?”

“I don’t think so,” Naz said. “This all started before you came aboard; I had arrangements to meet up with him on Taabi before we’d even landed on Sykkin. If I had to guess I’d assume he thinks he knows something about John’s job or something else he can use to blackmail me for some plan of his. It wouldn’t be out of character for him, but I’ve mostly managed to stay on his good side before this.”

“His former ship was the _ Golden Sabre,_” Auston added. “Someone there might have asked him a favor, too.”

John glanced at Auston, an eyebrow raised. Auston flushed.

“I looked him up when you mentioned you were carrying bugged cargo. His history is interesting. His ship registry reads like a list of tabloid gossip: the _ Golden Sabre, _ the _ Wild Eye,_ and at least three Tiger-class ships. He isn’t registered to a ship at the moment, but his last known affiliation was with an SCL, of all places.”

“I think the favor idea might have some weight,” Naz mused. “Enzo is incredibly loyal, even when he branched out on his own.”

“I don’t suppose we could call him and just...ask?” Auston said. John rolled his eyes as Naz punched Auston in the arm.

John shook his head. “We’ve got bigger problems than Tyler Ennis. Once we deliver his cargo we can sweep the ship for residual bugs. Whatever he wants he’s got a limited window to when we’re landed on Terra Beta. He definitely knows we know about his trackers, but if he knows what’s good for him he won’t own up to following us. The trackers he can pass off as concern over his cargo, but if he doesn’t think he can get a clear kidnapping or murder attempt in he won’t risk burning his bridge with Naz.”

Naz exhaled, long and slow. “So priority one is getting that cargo the fuck off my ship. Priority two is a ground sweep. And priority three is getting out of here and doing a deeper sweep out in space.”

“Are we avoiding the ship?” Auston asked.

“I don’t think we can reasonably avoid it too much longer before they know for certain we've caught on. We do need to be wary of tails,” Naz said.

“And I don’t think Mitch should be alone for the moment,” John added. “I know Terra Beta, and unless the criminal element here has majorly changed, it’s not something we can’t just handle by being careful.”

“We can take a profit loss here if it means getting off-world faster,” Naz said. “On the other hand, if we think something bigger is coming and we can handle this, I think that might be a reasonable course of action.”

“I’ll stick with Mitch,” Auston offered. “The two of us can stay on the _Hiraeth,_ make sure no one sneaks aboard. Between our wakecycles and Mitch’s alarm set-up, we’ll know if anyone tries anything since someone will always be awake.”

“I’m more worried about someone smuggling something on with a load of cargo we acquire,” John said grimly, a deep sense of unease curling in his gut. “Or about someone pulling something while we’re off the ship right now.”

“Mitch, how fast do you think you can do a confident bug sweep of critical systems?”

Mitch considered, clearly running calculations in his head. “A 95% confident sweep, sixteen standard hours. Closer to twenty-five hours if you want a 98% confidence, and longer for anything more certain than that.”

“You’ve got fourteen hours,” Naz said, rubbing his forehead like he did when he was getting a migraine. “Are we critically low on anything we haven’t already discussed? Anything we absolutely can’t make do without for the next two solar weeks? I know we planned six days here, but I want us off planet in the next twenty hours.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

While Mitch and Auston headed back to the _Hiraeth _to start a subtle bug sweep and to ensure no one had stowed away any extra cargo, John and Naz went to collect critical supplies and lay a few false leads as to where they were going. Mitch needed spools of solder, in varying wire gauges and solder in flat sheets, and fifty standard units of moldable plastic for repairs in the near future; Auston needed ammo cartridges; the whole ship needed miscellaneous food supplies.

“John, personal lubricant is not on our list of essentials,” Naz said when John took a stop at a shop that sold their favorite brand.

“I refuse to put anything on my dick that doesn’t come from one of the Tierras, and we’re almost out,” John said, shameless. “If we’re going to die, we’re going to die well-lubricated. Besides, Auston put in a request for all-purpose body wipes; we can completely get that at the same store.”

Naz sighed and followed John into the store.

After Naz and John collected the first load of supplies, they headed back to the _Hiraeth._ Naz switched off with Auston, and John set back out into the city with Auston trailing along, this time to file a flight plan and make some discreet transfer of funds in case of emergency.

When they returned to the _Hiraeth,_ they found Naz in what could only be described as a fit of rage at the onboard machinery.

“I’m going to go make sure everything is securely bolted down in the cargo hold,” Auston said, and took off as fast as he could without running.

“What’s going on?” John asked, laying a pacifying hand on Naz’s shoulder.

“It’s the damn ‘ponics,” Naz spit, looking like he wanted nothing more than to take a wrench to the crates stacked in their bay. “They’re fucking up our grav again, and if we don’t get them fixed our grav is going to be far too heavy and start crushing bones.”

Mitch paled and shrank back a little. “Sorry.”

Naz pointed a wrench at him. “It’s not your fault, but also I’m gonna need you working double-time to fix it or we’re going to be stuck on this fucking planet for another week, and I fucking _ refuse _.”

Mitch took another step back.

“Naz,” John said quietly. “Can I talk to you for a minute? We’ll let Mitch look at the ‘ponics, and we’ll wait for Auston to get back.”

Naz huffed out a breath but followed John into their quarters, which were dimly lit and quiet.

“What did you want?” Naz turned to face John, still clearly grumpy.

“Are you okay?” John asked, settling his hands on Naz’s hips. “You’ve seemed off the last few days.”

“We have a fugitive on our ship, one of the Republic’s best soldiers just tried to kill my damn mechanic, one of my contacts seems to be plotting our murder for fuck knows what reason, and we’re on the same planet as your _ mother _ .” Naz huffed, scowling. “Of fucking course I’m not okay. There’s nothing okay about any of this, this situation is fucked. We’re waiting for the Republic to issue a warrant for our arrests at any _ minute _.”

“They won’t have an issue unless someone lets them know we have Mitch,” John soothed. “We’ll be fine. Unless you think Enzo knows who Mitch is, we shouldn’t have an issue.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Naz heaved out a sigh and rested his head on John’s shoulder. “He might. Enzo is too damn smart for his own good. I’m just wondering...at what point do we just...plan an escape? If Mitch just remains, y’know, supposedly dead--we could just go about our lives. We don’t have to be heroes or rebels, or anything we weren’t before. Mitch was living a quiet life as a mechanic. Sykkin will defend themselves. There’s no reason the Republic would have to know or any indication they’d figure it out.”

“Except if Auston and I start acting strangely, it will flag someone or something. We can only go dark for so long before someone starts looking into our cases, and if Auston figured it out by looking into my file and seeing Mitch’s face someone else will put it together. Sykkin was enough of a mess they’re guaranteed to be looking into it already, and they’ll want someone to blame, even if they don’t link Mitch to the _ Hiraeth _.”

Naz inhaled deeply and pushed back from John. “I’m going to check the ship for bugs. This ‘ponics mishap seems too well-timed to be a coincidence, especially with how loaded Enzo’s shipment was with bugs. A lot of this was me making a visible fuss, but...I’m worried, John.”

John kissed his forehead. “You couldn’t have given us a heads up?”

“When would I have been able to do that?” Naz shook his head. “I’ve got to sweep the ship for bugs.”

“And you’ll apologize to Mitch for scaring the hell out of him?”

“And I’ll apologize to Mitch for scaring the hell out of him,” Naz promised. “Sorry. I’m just on edge.”

“Not to beat a dead horse, but this would be easier with more crew.”

Naz fixed John with a flat stare. “You want to bring someone else into this entire carnival of fuckery?”

John paused, clearly thinking it over. “Well, at least you’d get a full night’s sleep,” he said, and Naz smacked him in the arm.

“Go make yourself useful and run the numbers on if we can fit any more weapons onto this ship, just in case.”

From what John could tell, the ‘ponics issues weren’t a total ruse. It did let Naz calculate a true flight plan instead of the fake one to Robruv they’d filed with Terra Beta’s flight control.

On the other hand, John knew that Mitch had been incredibly thorough with the ‘ponics themselves. If something went wrong with them, someone had been on the ship, and tampered with something that then affected the ‘ponics.

At this point, though, it was a waiting game. For the first time since John had left his home planet, John couldn't wait to leave.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: TERRA BETA TO PERSEPHONE**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

It took them a day and a half longer than anticipated to get off the ground on Terra Beta, which was a day faster than Naz’s original estimate and a day and a half slower than Naz would have liked. Mitch was exhausted, but he kept chattering sleepily about the repairs he’d made to the ‘ponics system and the ones he still intended to do.

“I need you to get Mitch to bed,” John said lowly to Auston once they were out of atmosphere. “I don’t think he’s slept since we landed on Terra Beta, and that can’t be healthy for him. I don’t think Sykkian biology is designed for extended periods of wakefulness.”

“Why me?” Auston asked, though he was already standing up from his desk in his cabin. He’d spent most of takeoff searching for tracker bugs and explosive charges. They hadn’t found anything physical, but there was still potentially a digital trace. 

“Because I’ve got to wrestle Naz down, and if either Mitch or Naz get within four steps of each other they’ll get the other going again.”

“Hm. Where was Mitch last?”

John gave Auston a grateful smile. “I think he was checking that the grav generator survived takeoff.”

Auston paused. “Should we interrupt him?”

“Worst comes to worst we’ll be down ship grav until he wakes up, and I’d rather have low-grav for a few hours than have a sleep-deprived mechanic working with a welding kit and affecting _ all _ship electronics.”

“Gotcha.”

John and Auston split up at the end of the corridor, Auston heading for the mechanics room and John taking the ladder to get up to the cockpit.

To his surprise, Naz wasn’t doing much in the cockpit other than watching Terra Beta rotate slowly beneath them, sipping at a steaming cup of tea. Jazzy was sitting in his lap, her chest rising and falling as she napped.

“Hey, sweetheart,” John murmured, settling into the seat beside his husband. “You doing okay?”

“Exhausted,” Naz admitted, which meant he was a heartbeat away from passing out there and then. “Thank fuck Mitch knows what he’s doing with a generator. We should see about enrolling him in distance engineering coursework; I’d love to see what he can do when he actually knows the theory behind what he’s doing.”

“I keep forgetting he never finished advanced education,” John said. He reached out and took the cup from Naz, taking a sip of his own. It was a savory tea, clearly laced with dairy of some sort and richly irony on the back of his tongue. “He’s so much younger than us.”

“Eight years isn’t that much,” Naz argued half-heartedly. “He’s actually older than Auston.”

John grimaced. “I keep forgetting how young _ he _ is, too.”

“Mm. Where is he, anyway?”

“Getting Mitch to bed.”

Naz laughed, a bright rich sound in the quiet of the cockpit. “Oh, that’ll be fun to see.”

“Hm?”

“Auston has a crush on Mitch. Or, it’s getting there; I’m not sure he realizes that’s what’s happening yet.” Naz grinned, taking the cup back from John. “And Mitch will cling to anything warm when he’s sleepy. He tried to get me to sleep with him last time I had to pry him out of the engines. He just kind of latched on and won’t let go when I got him into his bunk. Five credits say we find out Auston spent the night in Mitch’s bunk tomorrow.”

John shook his head. “Not taking that bet.” He reached over and laid his hand on Naz’s thigh. “Hey. You going to come to bed anytime soon?”

Naz gave him a wry smile. “Once upon a time you’d have been hoping to get some with that question.”

“Who says I’m not hoping to get some?” John shot back. “I’ll get some eventually; I know you.”

“I think the only thing either of us is getting tonight is some sleep.” Naz drained his cup and set it down to stretch, his back popping. “When did we get old, JT?”

“I don’t think we’re that old yet.”

“We’re married with a ship and a kid with a boyfriend, and we’re going to bed long before the shipboard clock reads midnight. You bought me new socks when you saw me getting grumpy. We’re definitely old.”

John stood, and bent to kiss Naz. “And still very much in love. Bed?”

“Do I get to be the little spoon this time?”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to bed.”

Naz looked up at John with a fondness in his eyes despite the sheer exhaustion. “You know I’d follow you anywhere.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Even though John knew in theory that the Republic would likely start putting the pieces together sooner than later, it was still a shock to the system when the gears started to move.

They were en route to Persephone, the inhabitable moon of an entirely uninhabitable planet with profitable mining operations and questionable legal integrity. With four people on the ship, they’d fallen into a roughly split wake cycle where there was almost always someone awake, but they were also working around Auston’s dual sleep cycle, which meant there were times when everyone was awake.

John would have preferred if this happened when everyone was asleep, but apparently he didn't get to choose when terrible news came in. They were all in the common area, occupying themselves, when the message came in.

**+0.2 (110) 31311 9920 (33-1.2)**  
_ Extermination order on you and M. Kill order on K and someone named Marner. Destruction order for the H. Want to explain? _

John stared at the message from Andersen, trying to break the fairly simple Common text down into an understandable concept.

“John?” Naz asked. “Everything okay?”

“The, uh--the extermination order came through,” John said quietly. “I mean--I knew we figured we were expecting it, but it’s still a shock to read.”

“They didn’t send it to you directly,” Naz asked. “I mean, right?”

“No, it was--Andersen forwarded it to me on one of our shadow servers. One of the ones the Republic doesn’t know about.” John closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead. “Stars, I knew this was coming, but...I guess some part of me was hoping the Republic had some respect for me. Shit.”

“Extermination order?” Mitch asked hesitantly, pausing in brushing out Jazzy’s fur.

Auston swallowed. He suddenly looked much older and much more exhausted. “Republic protocol is to terminate rogue agents and potential information leaks. As special ops guys, John and I are considered very high risk. An exterminate order is the, uh, most extreme kill order. It doesn’t matter who gets in the way as casualties. The only thing that matters is that the targets end up dead.”

“There’s no amnesty once an extermination order has been issued,” Naz added quietly. “It’s...pretty absolute.”

“So what does this mean now?” Mitch asked.

“Well, most of the people we know aren’t going to go after me or Auston,” John said. “We’re too well-respected, and known to be very loyal. It’s going to raise some eyebrows because either we’ve done something horrendous or the Republic is doing something very wrong.”

“But there are definitely plenty of people who will do it and gladly, especially those who think we’ve betrayed the Republic,” Auston put in. “Which, to be fair--we have, and not just technically. We’re definitely traitors at this point.”

“Andersen and Kessel have both reached out,” John told him. “Andersen is definitely not buying the sleeper cell traitors line. He’s already threatened to track us down to shake the truth out of us and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up on our ship. He does _ not _ like being lied to and he's one of the best special forces officers in the galaxy.”

“Kessel is just firing shots off in the dark. If we open her message, there's no way she doesn't have a trace embedded somehow.” Naz rubbed at his forehead. “I didn’t expect this to happen so soon. The Republic is not known for quick, decisive action.”

“They are when they have a security threat,” John said grimly. He exhaled deeply, rolling his head from side to side to loosen the stiffness that was building there.”Whether they know that Mitch is, well, Mitch, or not, they have two high-clearance agents who objectively just went rogue in a big way.”

“And if they don’t know Mitch is Mitch, they’ll be scrambling for a reason why we stopped following orders and why Enzo’s people are suddenly furious at us. The easiest way to deal with that is to just get rid of us.”

Mitch was playing with the tail ends of his ribbon, rubbing at the ends and clearly thinking. “So what happens now?”

Naz shrugged. “In general or for you specifically?”

“Uh, in general.”

John snorted, slumping back into the chair. “Well, either we die because someone gets us, either for the bounty or out of loyalty to the Republic, or we manage to disappear ourselves and hope no one figures out where we’ve gone.” John felt his shoulders lift in a halfhearted shrug. “It’s a tossup which way it goes, at this point.”

Mitch was still frowning. “Is it--do we have the ability to disappear?”

“We’ve all got favors to cash in,” Auston said.

“I’ve used a few to buy ourselves a few days,” Naz added. He tapped at John’s tablet. “John’s been moving funds around as subtly as he can, but it’s going to be a trick and a half to make the _ Hiraeth _disappear.”

“We’ve already gone comms dark.” John slid the tablet over for Mitch to see. “Unless we missed a tracer or something, all our tracers should be along a flight plan to Robruv, which is where our flight plan claimed we were going. We’ve basically gone ghost, and we have enough supplies to last for a few weeks while we get more in depth on our plan.”

“Liquid assets are another problem, but we’ve all got reserves and favors we can play around with.” Naz smiled crookedly. “When you’ve worked on the Republic for as long as we have, you build a few back-up plans.”

Auston tapped on his own tablet. “We’re also headed to Persephone,” he said quietly. John could see the beginnings of a new identity building up on his screen. “Capital of false IDs, and a great place if you want to really annoy anyone following you.”

One particular part of the information scroll caught John’s eye. “J. Mitchell Qadri?”

Auston shrugged. “He’s pretty much your kid at this point. Might as well make it official.”

“Qadri, though?”

Auston shrugged. “Sounds just the same as Kadri, and you might as well go all in on a family name if you’re changing everything about your lives.”

John grumbled. “He could be Mitchell--I don’t know, Tabares. Casarez.”

“Well, he’ll be John Mitchell Qadri.”

John’s commchip beeped.

**+2.9 (117) 51678 1515 ** (Z. Hyman)  
_ Uh, some of Tyler Ennis’ friends were asking about you and weren’t all that nice about it. I told them you had left the planet, but I’ll admit I’m curious. _

John groaned. “Well, there’s the criminal element officially after us, to round this whole mess out.”


	5. PORT: HYDPO, PERSEPHONE

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: HYDPO, PERSEPHONE**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

With an extermination order on their heads from the Republic and a private bounty on their asses from Enzo, the _Hiraeth _was getting a lot more attention than Naz preferred. He and John had decided who they needed to reach out to and had contacted the appropriate people.

Now, it was a waiting game, and Mitch was having none of it.

“I don’t think you should go alone,” John said.

Mitch scowled at him, arms folded across his chest. “I’ve been fine so far.”

“There wasn’t a Republic bounty on your head before. I’d really feel safer if you stayed on the ship.”

“This is only the fourth planet I’ve ever been to,” Mitch pointed out. He felt like that should be a stronger argument than anyone was giving him credit for. “How am I supposed to get used to living aboard a spaceship and engaging in galactic trade if I can’t see other planets?”

“Naz and I have things we need to get done and I don’t think you’re ready to go on your own.”

“I’ll go with you,” Auston offered. “If you’re not comfortable with it, I get it, but--offer’s on the table.”

Mitch and John both turned to look at Auston, who was staidly looking at his tablet. Mitch shifted his weight from foot to foot; he wasn’t going to say no to a chance to explore a new planet, but it would also be the first time he was alone with Auston.

“You’ll be pretty safe with Auston,” John said hesitantly. “If you, you know, feel comfortable with it.”

“I really do want to go exploring.” Mitch bit his lip, tallying up the pros and cons of Auston as his escort. “Alright. I guess if they want you dead you’re not likely to kill me.”

“I haven’t been likely to kill you since I boarded this ship off Avyline,” Auston said dryly. “Alright, where did you want to go?”

“What?”

John snorted. “He’s assigned himself bodyguard detail. He wants to know where you’re going so he can track down schematics and make escape plans.”

Auston elbowed John sharply, cheeks splotching with color. “I just want to make sure we’ll be safe. A planned route helps with that.”

“I was just going to wander around and explore,” Mitch said. “And I wanted to visit some of the local vendors to see if I can get parts to upgrade the climate control. I think I’ve figured out why the bathroom is always freezing and the hallway is always too-warm, but I’ll need some metal tape and a few miscellaneous parts. Plus I need to reinforce the backup fuel source power supplies so we don’t get stuck if something _ does _ go wrong unexpectedly.”

“Well, why don’t you two meet back here in an hour? That’ll give Auston time to figure out a protection plan and Mitch time to pack up his bag and make a supply list. Do either of you need planetary currency?”

“I figured I’d stop by one of the exchange booths,” Mitch said. “I looked up planetary rates and Naz helped me get a credit chip for what he pays me, so I should be okay.”

“I’ve got hard currency on me for lunch and a handful of small things,” Auston said. “We’ll be fine, John.”

“You’d better both come back in one piece,” JT warned, and then wandered off to do whatever JT did when he was in port and unconcerned that his charges would survive.

Mitch shrugged and went back to packing up his bag. Auston disappeared for a moment and returned with a jacket.

“Why do you care?” Mitch asked as Auston watched him slot meal bars into his bag along with a collapsible bento and an extra battery for his data chip. “You weren’t exactly excited to meet me.”

Auston was still a little flushed. “I don’t want you dead _ now _.”

“I’m just curious about what changed your mind.”

“It was never personal,” Auston argued. “Besides, we’re both in this now. Killing you wouldn’t help me.”

Mitch shrugged, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “If you say so. You ready to go?”

The two of them headed out into the city of Hydpo. As far as galactic civilizations went, Hydpo was a relatively young city, only a few hundred years old. It had come into existence as the Republic expanded, even though Persephone had original settlements before encountering the Republic. It was still a fairly quiet city, with wide streets lined with trees and a vaguely Tierran aesthetic to the architecture. They took a mag-lev from the travel hub outside of the city into the city proper, and from there Mitch decided to explore by foot, Auston trailing along a half-step behind.

“You said you wanted to find a metalwork shop?” Auston asked. “I think we’d have better luck a little more into the industrial district; this area is pretty limited to style.”

Mitch lingered outside of a beauty parlor; Hydpo wasn’t known for their fashion, but like every city, the citizens had a range of style preferences.

“Did you want to go in?” Auston asked. His eyes were scanning the building; he clearly didn’t trust the parlor, but he also didn’t seem to have a real opposition to it either.

“I’m not sure,” Mitch replied. He tugged at his blue ribbon and then shook his head. “Naz has hair clippers on the ship. I can do it there.”

“If you want, we can go. What did you want to do?”

Mitch sighed and kept walking. He was quiet for a few minutes, then said, “How did you give up being Drakkan? To become Republic, I mean.”

Auston considered the question. “I don’t think I did. I was born on Ladon, but being a citizen of Drakkan meant less to me than being a citizen of the Republic as a whole. My parents weren’t from Ladon originally anyways, so my family observed the same cultural holidays as most Tierran families.”

Mitch let go of the blue ribbon and paused in front of a clothing shop. “So you don’t consider yourself Drakkan?”

“I think I do,” Auston said slowly. “But I’m Republic first, and then Drakkan after that. But I also haven’t been back to Ladon in years.”

“Any reason?”

“My family doesn’t live there anymore, so that’s a start,” Auston said dryly. “Ladon experienced pretty bad ground tremors about a decade ago. One of my sisters died in the evacuation, and the rest of my family now lives on Avyline.”

“Oh,” Mitch said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t be. She’s been dead a few years now. I joined the military not long before she died so I wasn’t there when it happened.” He smiled sheepishly, half of his mouth quirking up. “You’ve lost more of your family, anyways.”

“I don’t know if they’re actually gone,” Mitch said simply. “Either they are, or they aren’t, but I don’t think I’ll ever know at this point.” He reached up and tugged at the blue ribbon, as was his habit. “I was wondering if I should stop wearing this.”

“But you don’t have a House you’re tied to?”

Mitch shrugged. “What do you think the _Hiraeth _is, if not a House? Naz is _lissi,_ and John his _linsi_. It’s unconventional, but there’s you and me, and all the other people Naz cares for. It’s a House in all the ways that matter.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.” Auston was quiet for a few more steps, and then-- “I guess it makes sense.”

“Blue is a kind of mourning,” Mitch said. “And I don’t know if I’m mourning them anymore. I miss them. I dream about my brother sometimes, and I miss my mother. But I do have a life without them now, and it feels disrespectful to claim that isolation when I have someone here with me.”

He reached out, and took Auston’s hand. Auston let his fingers curl around Mitch’s, and felt a tentative kind of hope bloom.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: PERSEPHONE TO DUETERA**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Naz was not generally used to a full ship. While the Hiraeth was designed for four crew and a full complement of passengers, it had run for years with only John and Naz permanently. Passengers flitted on and off, with the longest voyages lasting no longer than a month or so. New crew only stayed for a single planetary cycle; some friends, like Auston or Zach, came back for shorter trips, but never permanently.

Naz was, in other words, not used to having more than two other people aware of the _ Hiraeth _’s secrets onboard at any given time. With three major secrets floating around the Hiraeth’s recycled air, Naz was pretty sure no one was keeping anything hidden. Not when Auston had fallen asleep in the mechanic’s quarters at least twice since they’d left Persephone. Not when they had picked up a third Republic BlackOps operative off of the moon Taurine. Not when John, for all that he was one of those three BlackOps operatives whose job wasn’t exactly supposed to exist was a very trusting, loyal man.

But that was where they were. John and Naz had each cashed in a few favors, getting them resources and time. Auston was in charge of mocking up fake identities--though Naz was certain Mitch had had something to do with their pending Sykkin naturalization.

“You’re twitching,” John murmured. They were curled up together in their bed, their cabin sorted out for their sleep cycle. Jazzy was asleep on the food of the bed, the image of serenity. Naz was watching something inane on his tablet--a space opera they’d downloaded years ago and still rewatched as more of background noise than anything else--while John read. “You alright?”

Before Naz could answer, John snorted, catching himself.

“Okay, right, alright you can be, given the situation.”

“Nervous,” Naz admitted. John smoothed his palm over Naz’s shoulder. “Exhausted. And we’ve only been on the run a week.”

“It’ll fall into place,” John said. “Or at least our death will be swift enough we don’t notice.”

Naz grimaced. “So cheery.”

“Could be worse.”

“Could always be worse.”

“And yet,” John said. “It’s not.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

The _Hiraeth,_ having picked up Freddie Andersen, met up with the _ Margaret Rejoice _just off the uninhabited world of Anioturn. The _ Margaret Rejoice _was barely half the size of the _Hiraeth,_ but it moved with a quiet grace, banking up and coming to a halt next to the stationary _Hiraeth _with incredible precision. Their passengers were able to transfer over to the _Hiraeth _with only a connector cable and space suits, so close were they.

John was the one to greet them at the airlock since Naz was busy handling everyone else on board, but they were quick to settle in.

Finally ready, Naz looked around the table. It was a larger crew than he’d expected, but everyone gathered around the table he’d wholeheartedly vetted every way he could.

Auston was flicking his laser blade from hand to hand, showing Mitch how to perform a few tricks. Jazzy was watching the blade flicker through the air, attempting to look disinterested.

Beside Mitch, Freddie Andersen was a looming presence. Naz had flown in combat with him and trusted few people as much. Despite being part of the same program that produced Auston and John, Freddie had a strong moral compass and a willingness to leave everything behind, if necessary. Naz had been in more than a few tight spots with Freddie and would trust him to fly the _Hiraeth _blindfolded.

Morgan Rielly was stretched out over a pair of seats, idly scratching at his scruffy beard. Naz was mostly certain Morgan Rielly was not actually his given name, but he was certain that Morgan was one of the best technical pilots in the galaxy, _and _he technically didn’t exist in Republic computer systems. He owed Naz a favor, but more importantly, he was loyal and had no love for the Republic. They’d met a decade ago when Naz was just starting to set up his cover; Morgan had called Naz out immediately.

Morgan’s long term partner Jake Gardiner was helping John bring cups of cold water over to the table. Like Morgan, Jake didn’t technically exist, but unlike his partner, Jake was definitely not on multiple government radars. Naz had no idea why Jake had agreed to come along, but he suspected it had to do with Jake’s unflinching loyalty to Morgan. He’d performed a very thorough bug sweep before letting Morgan transfer to the _Hiraeth _from the _ Margaret Rejoice._

Zach Hyman was calling in on a comm chip looped through several other planetary backwaters and encoded to hell and back. Like Freddie, he’d seen the Republic’s orders; unlike Freddie, he was more interested in _whys_, rather than the _hows. _

“So what do we know?” John asked, parking himself at the table. Jake slid in next to him, half a protein bar hanging out of his mouth.

“Well, the Republic wants you all dead,” Freddie said flatly. “That’s the short version.”

“The question is what to do about it,” Naz said. “Because an extermination order isn’t something they can call back, even if we somehow proved our innocence.”

Zach’s eyebrows shot up. “They put an extermination order on civilians? That’s a new low for the Republic.”

“Technically Mitch is the only civilian,” Auston replied. “Naz is Reservist.”

Morgan hummed thoughtfully, taking one of the water glasses from the center of the table. 

It was Zach who spoke next. “Is there a kill order on him?”

Freddie was the one to reply this time. “A detention order for a visa violation under his alias; a quiet kill order under his Sykkian identity. His isn’t so public; they don’t have a good enough excuse on him yet.”

John laid his hands on the table. “So what are our options here?”

“We take off for non-Republic space,” Auston said. “And hope they consider that as good as dead and leave us alone.”

“A long shot,” Jake said.

“We go public about the situation on Sykkin and hope there are enough people on our side and we can maintain enough visibility to protect ourselves.” John shrugged. “But that would risk radicalizing the Sykkin population and drawing further ire from the Republic. And we’d have to trust that people would believe us.”

“Which they may well not,” Morgan said. “I’m assuming turning yourself in is a non-option?”

Auston snorted, which was answer enough.

“I think faking the destruction of the Hiraeth might be the only option,” Naz said finally. “There’s a reason I asked you to come see us, Morgan.”

Morgan’s expression stiffened. “I’m sorry, I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“I think,” John said slowly. “You’ve heard our secrets, and you can reasonably expect us to keep yours.”

Morgan rubbed at his face, and it looked like he’d aged a decade in that second.

“You know what this would mean, right?” Morgan asked. His expression was uncharacteristically solemn; for as long as Naz had known him, he always wore an easy grin. It was disconcerting to see him so somber. “You can’t undo this. You can’t ever see your parents again, or your friends. Your homeworld won’t be your homeworld; I wouldn’t recommend even thinking about going within that system, much less going home. None of your contacts will be trustworthy. You will be completely starting from scratch. Your lives will be very, _ very _ different.”

“You did it,” Naz pointed out.

Freddie was looking at everyone at the table, long considering looks.

“I did,” Morgan said, grimacing. “I have Jake, but I’m not going to lie: it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and it continues to be. The only reason you even know anything about this is because I seriously fucked up. My parents think I’m dead. I can’t talk to my brother. I had to completely start over and so did Jake.”

“But do you regret it?” John asked.

Jake reached over and held onto Morgan’s hand, squeezing.

“Sometimes,” Jake said for the both of them. “It’s hard not to call on birthdays, or know I can’t ask for advice. I know if Morgan dies, I won’t have any family left. I can’t go back, because there is literally nothing for me there anymore. The people who raised me have found some sense of peace in my disappearance. I haven’t heard the name they used to call me in years. It’s a complete erasure of everything that made you who you were. The easiest way to go about it is to develop a past similar to the past you’ve really had, but even then--you’ll be starting from scratch.”

“It’s the option most likely to work,” John said. “Especially if we can rework our identities into something the Republic won’t expect.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Morgan warned again.

“And constantly living on the run from the Republic is going to be?” Naz countered. “Or depending on the Sykkian people wanting Mitch to help rule them, which isn’t even a 50/50 chance of happening? If you have a better idea I think almost anything would be better than faking our deaths, but I don’t know if we have a more feasible option on our hands.”

There was quiet as everyone around the table mulled it over.

“If we can think of something better, we’ll do that,” Naz said finally when it was apparent no one had any better ideas. “But for now--we’ll start preparing to destroy the _ Hiraeth _.”

“I can’t be the one to identify your bodies,” Freddie said. “I’m definitely linked to you enough that it would be suspicious. But I can definitely point someone in the right direction.”

“If we landed in any Republic-affiliated port, the Hiraeth is recognizable enough someone will try to bug it,” John said. “Maybe we could use that to our advantage.”

“You’ll want to make sure they find some kind of remains,” Jake told them. “No body is very suspicious.”

“Does it have to be an entire body, or can it be genetic material?” Auston asked, looking like he was already figuring out logistics. “Lab-grown tissue? A severed hand?”

Mitch stared at him; Naz was already trying to figure out where he’d find the right sorts of tissue.

“A lab-grown set of tissue with your DNA should be good enough,” Jake said, a wryly amused look on his face. “They’ll assume you were shredded. You’ll probably find a vendor for it on Duetera.”

“And after?”

Morgan snorted. “Well, you plant it on the ship and stage an accident in the middle of a shipping lane where someone will find you.”

John sighed. “I meant after _ that _.”

“Well, we’ll drop you off somewhere with a resale shipyard, and you’ll get a new ship under your new name to start a new life.” Morgan shrugged, looking around the table. “It’s a lot easier than you might think, to vanish into thin air.”


	6. PORT: RÊVASSERIE, DUETERA

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: RÊVASSERIE, DUETERA**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•

Duetera was the kind of galactic backwater that definitely didn’t pay attention to Republic ordinances, and probably would have, to a man, burst out laughing if anyone tried to imply they should enforce them. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place Naz went if he had a choice, but it was also the best place in the nearby systems to obtain multiple cadavers and a new identity.

As they descended into the Dueteran atmosphere, Naz explained to Mitch that he had a contact who could develop realistic backgrounds for them, who would ensure the proper records wormed themselves into the right databases, and all the debris of a natural life would be scattered across the galaxy.

Morgan and Jake had peeled off to scatter their own breadcrumbs. Morgan had a lead on a replacement ship for the _Hiraeth,_ and Jake had bluntly told them he wanted Morgan as far out of the epicenter of this particular disaster as he could get him.

Mitch had watched a moment between the two of them when everyone had been busy with preparations for separating the ships and plotting the proper courses. Jake had drawn Morgan into an embrace and pressed his lips to the top of Morgan’s head, just lingering there. He was scared, the way John was scared for Naz. The difference was that John knew Naz could protect himself because he’d had to. Jake had managed to keep Morgan safe thus far and Morgan had never had to prove his own competence.

Freddie was heading back deep into Republic space, leaning heavily on his contacts to eventually lead someone to whatever would remain of the _Hiraeth._ With Zach Hyman’s help, he would be working a new history into the Republic’s records and laying a virus that would deploy months down the line to remove any investigatory pings and ensure the Hiraeth’s disappearance was never investigated later.

Things were going to plan; they were sticking to the buddy system, pairing up and laying their groundwork. There was not a whole lot they could do other than wait, but Mitch was making a serious go of it.

“I’m going to set up a faulty fuel line,” he told Naz, carefully focusing on the lines running through the mechanic’s bay. “If we’re going to let someone place charges, I’m going to make the explosion as total as possible, but if I do this right it’ll look like there was a mechanical issue compounding anything that they do, and it should help make the destruction a little more...complete, I guess?”

“Explain why there are only tissue fragments instead of whole bodies,” Naz said. “Smart. But you’ll keep it safe enough we can still get out of here quick?”

“Yeah, it’ll be a matter of switching in a damaged pipe, but the trick is making the break pattern look natural.”

Naz left Mitch to his work, with Auston in earshot and Mitch wearing a pipe thin with finely abrasive sandpaper.

Of course, things going well just wasn’t how their lives were meant to shake out, because admits the long enough, weird enough hours, it actually took an uncomfortably long time for anyone to realize Mitch was missing.

To be entirely fair, no one expected him to have left the ship, so that alone was enough to throw everyone off. Naz had assumed Mitch was in earshot of Auston, who had assumed Mitch was helping John store their lab-grown tissue samples, and John had assumed Mitch was with Naz, working on their new identities. It was a failure of obnoxiously simple failure, and Naz was pissed off about it.

“I’m going to _murder _him,” Naz growled when it became appparent Mitch was absolutely, 100% not on the _Hiraeth._ “Or at least install a tracking chip in him. How dumb could he be, to leave the ship?”

Auston had already gone to review the security footage of the cargo bay and the mechanic’s bay, the last two locations he was known to be; John was already putting out feelers with the ‘Nauts and the Underworld, and any Republic contacts who were still willing to speak to him.

Naz had his own list of suspects, but Freddie Andersen and Morgan Rielly were clearing, and that left someone on Duetera.

“Good news,” Auston said, dropping his tablet onto the table. There was a looped clip on the screen, revealing an unfamiliar face cheekily waving at the camera and hauling Mitch’s unmoving body off the ship. “Unless the ‘Nauts have teamed up with the Republic, it’s not the Republic.”

“And the bad news?”

“Well, one of us definitely pissed off someone affiliated with the _ Bytown Packet,_ because someone dumb enough to be wearing their ID patch is who grabbed Mitch.”

John paused. “Do we...know anyone on the _ Bytown Packet _?”

Auston scratched his head. “Karlsson?”

“He shifted over to the _ Santa Clara _a while ago,” John retorted. “I know Ennis was affiliated with them--and Ceci, but he’s over on the _ Carlton Acer _ now, isn’t he?”

“Maybe Ennis just cashed in a favor?” Naz suggested. “Or they’re after us for the same reason Enzo is. There has to have been something that set this off; Mitch isn’t exactly a huge prize if they don’t know his origins, and I doubt anyone on the _ Bytown Packet _ would know.”

“Someone on board definitely has a Republic contact who would know we're wanted on the Republic’s side,” John reminded him. “They don’t have to know who Mitch is to know he’d be leverage on any one of us.” John grimaced. “Auston, you have any more info on where he’d be taken?”

Auston tapped at the tablet. “Well, by the ship jumpsuit, either someone wanted us to know he was on the Bytown or think he was on the Bytown. I'll check to see if it’s in port here. It'll take me an hour to get into city and port security cams to get more detail than that, and if they’re any good they’ll have obfuscated the footage. It might be smarter to try to track him manually.”

John’s commchip buzzed.

“Why would Backes be--” he started, then groaned. “He’s on the _ Ursa_.”

“Probably not,” Naz retorted. “Chara’s not dumb enough for that. They’re planetside; Chara will want the Ursa as far away from Duetera in case the Republic starts a deeper sweep.”

“Backes wants us to meet him in one of the hotels in the Caverns,” John reported. “He wants to _ catch up,_ apparently.”

“They’ve definitely got Mitch.” Naz rubbed at his forehead. “Okay. What time is the dinner?”

“Sixteen-twenty local time.”

Naz mulled it over. “Okay, here’s the plan. Auston, stay here and monitor the _Hiraeth._ Get going on the footage and get some info on the _ Bytown _’s location. John, get our gear together.”

“What’re you doing?” Auston asked, already tapping at the tablet.

Naz scowled. “I'm setting the _ Hiraeth _’s self-destruct. If we go down, we’re taking half the port. And then, John and I are going to get Mitch back. John, pack a change of clothes.”

John's grin was sharp. “I'll bring two.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•

Mitch had been kidnapped before. The first time, he was still too young to really remember it--but he did remember the wrinkled face of the woman who’d stolen him away, and the red paintmarks she’d had tattooed along her hairline.

“I don’t want to kill you, child-prince,” she’d told him crisply. “I want to kill the people who will come looking for you.”

Mitch didn’t remember what had happened to her, since he’d been rescued and taken away before he could learn too much more.

The second and third times had been incredibly boring, all revolutionaries trying to get his parents’ attention. He’d always been returned before negotiations had gotten too far, and had never really been kidnapped by anyone who wanted to do _him _harm.

This group didn’t seem too much different than that. He was shut in a room with a chair and a book, and a flask of water. Outside the door, he could hear people chatting in a variety of languages, with a broad array of accents and laughs.

Mitch left the water alone, chose to sit on the floor rather than on the chair, and closed his eyes. He’d been studying a mechanic’s textbook that Naz had acquired somewhere, and he thought he could quiz himself on some of the more specific vocabularies.

His sense of time had never been all that sharp. It hadn’t been a problem when he was working onboard the _Hiraeth,_ without any natural-light day cycles, or on Sykkin, where punctuality wasn’t particularly valued. He wasn’t sure how long he was there, but he knew it was no short time.

People came in and out of the room; he mostly ignored them. He’d eaten not long before someone had come up behind him in the _ Hiraeth _’s mechanics’ bay and held a laser-knife hilt to his abdomen and threatened to inform the Republic of Naz and John’s location if Mitch didn’t come along quietly. He could survive a few days without eating; for now, he wasn’t sure what was in it.

He yelped in surprise when someone grabbed his upper arm and dragged him to his feet.

“We’ve gotta go,” a familiar blond hissed.

Mitch blinked at him. “Willy?”

“Come on, move.”

Willy shifted his grip to Mitch’s wrist and hauled ass out of there. They stumbled out the front doors onto the main street with Willy dragging Mitch as fast as he could.

Willy clearly knew these streets well, dodging across skywalks and around corners until Mitch could hardly tell which direction they’d started from or any way back to the _Hiraeth._ They skidded to a stop in a random alleyway, both of them breathing heavily.

“We should be good here for a minute, but we’ve got to go find your crew,” Willy informed him between gulps of air. “Enzo is not going to be pleased.”

“I don’t think _ Naz _ is going to be pleased.”

Willy shrugged. “Look, you’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Why’d you get me out of there anyway?” Mitch asked.

Willy just shook his head. “It was the right thing to do. Come on, we’ve got a long walk back to your ship.”

It was indeed a long walk back to the terminal where the _Hiraeth _was docked, but Willy clearly didn’t want to risk taking any shortcuts or smaller walkways he might have known, preferring to stick to large crowds and heavily populated areas. They might have gone faster if they’d taken one of the personal transport tubes, but neither of them was particularly willing to split up.

They reached the spaceport when the planetary sun was starting to rise; it took them another standard hour to reach the _Hiraeth._ Mitch keyed his code into the _Hiraeth _to board through the gangplank and was immediately dragged back by Willy at the flash of a gun muzzle.

“What the fuck,” Mitch managed, before realizing that this particular gun was being aimed at Willy, by Auston.

“What are you doing here?” Auston demanded. “Take a step away from Mitch, Nylander.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Willy said.

Mitch kept himself between Auston and Willy. “He helped me, Aus. He’s the one who got me away from Enzo and his crew.”

“Why should we trust you?” Auston demanded. Even with Mitch between Auston and Willy, there was no doubt Auston could take the shot and not miss.

Willy had his hands held out, palms up. He carefully took a step back from Mitch and another. “Because I don’t want to hurt your Mitch, and I don’t like what Ennis is doing.”

“You know Naz and John are out there working to get Mitch back,” Auston said. “Why should I believe this isn’t part of a trick Enzo is playing?”

“My brother and sister were recruits on the _ Golden Sabre _with Ennis,” Willy said. “I joined up to get them out.”

“Did you?”

Willy’s grin was sharp. “Oh, they’re safe now.”

“But you got entangled.”

“All three Nylanders couldn’t just vanish all at once,” Willy admitted. “And I was a little better equipped to handle anything they wanted me to do to prove my loyalty. For what it’s worth, I don’t care about the bounty the ‘Nauts have on you or the DOA from the Republic. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a good sort and I just want to make sure no one drags my family into the middle of a galactic war.”

Auston was studying him, still holding the neutrino level. “You have a place to go?”

Willy shrugged. “Was going to find my way to Delrabi and see if I could take on as a pilot. It’s what I was doing before all this.”

A strange look spread across Auston’s face. “Delrabi is a beautiful place.”

There was a momentary pause from Willy. “Well, the stars shine brighter there.”

For some reason, that was what made Auston lower his neutrino. “Bright stars are never to be underestimated.”

From behind Mitch, Willy snorted. “Dude, your code phrases _ suck _.”

“Worked, didn’t they?”

Mitch darted glances between them. “What,” he asked. “The _ fuck _?”

“Ah, Mitch, this is Lands. He’s been a contact of mine passing along Intel on a handful of Underworld and ‘Naut ships.”

“I thought it was Willy.”

“It is,” Willy said. “Lands is the handle I used. I didn’t realize Scott Taylor was flying with Nazem Kadri.”

Auston rolled his eyes. “I mean, that's not my name.”

“No, it’s the most obvious fake name anyone has ever used in the history of ever,” Willy chirped. ”So do you have an evac plan for this clusterfuck? Ennis is about to be furious.”

“I think Naz and John are just planning to burn it all down and go off the grid.” Auston shrugged. “Get anything good while you were embedded?”

Willy jerked a thumb at Mitch. “Most of the ‘Nauts think this one is an ambassador’s illegitimate son and that he's worth ransom. From what Brown has told me that's a pretty common assumption in the Underworld, but mostly people want to know what the fuck is going on with Naz to get a full bounty on himself.” Willy shrugged. “It sounds like Fleury is doing a full search with the crew of the _ Geneviève Escalibor,_ but Kessel called in some favors with the _ Manada Salvaje _and the _ Emperor Allegheny._ He still likes Naz, for God knows what reason.”

Auston smiled, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “John did him a favor, once. I think he's cashing that in.”

“That sounds like Naz. I don’t think there's anyone in the universe that doesn’t owe him something or hadn't owed him something.”

Auston was watching Willy with a sharp smile. “Are you really planning to take on a pilot somewhere?”

Willy shrugged. “I'm honestly not sure. I can't go back to the ‘Nauts, obviously. Pilots are in demand in the Underworld, so I'll find something.”

“Come with us,” Mitch blurted out.

Auston and Willy stared at him.

“You can't be serious,” Willy said.

Mitch flushed. “I mean, we need another crew member, and Ennis knows Willy is with us--”

“I sure hope he doesn't,” Willy grumbled. “I really don't need that in my life.”

Auston looked like he was actually considering it. “That might not actually be the worst idea in the universe.”

“You want me to join your crew of fugitives trying to outsmart both the Republic and every criminal in a fifteen-system radius?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Oh,” Willy said. “I'm totally in. But one of you is gonna have to tell Nazem Kadri why I'm on his ship.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

“You let a ‘Naut on my ship?” Naz roared, storming into the room. He had a disposable two-shot in his left hand and a precision-edge steel blade in his right. “_ Auston Taylour Matthews, are you out of your mind?” _

“If it’s worth anything,” Willy said, mostly unphased by this fuming and irate version of Naz. “I mostly accepted a position on the _ Carlton Acer _ to watch the _ Golden Sabre _ burn.”

Naz’s shirt was bloody, but not in any way that suggested it was his own blood. Auston didn’t envy the conversation Naz had with Melnyk.

John trailed behind Naz, his clothes completely pristine and his neutrino neatly holstered, with his rifle slung over his back. His neatness was definitely scarier than Naz’s bloody shirt, for more reasons than Auston particularly cared to go into.

“He got Mitch off of the _Ursa,_” Auston said. “And we need extra crew.”

Naz sighed, completely deflating. “Oh, well then.” He cocked his head, studying Willy. “Wait. You were with Enzo on Taabi.”

Willy shrugged. “And now I’m not.”

“You trust him?” Naz asked Auston. “Without a shadow of a doubt?”

“I’ll kill him myself if I’m wrong,” Auston retorted. “He got dragged into this by mistake, and he’s a decent pilot. I checked his record; he can fly. Any ship we get to replace the _Hiraeth _is still going to need crew. He's pissed off Enzo, and the entire crews of the _ Golden Sabre _and the _ Lalli Music,_ so he's got as much reason as any of us to keep quiet. He threw out any trust they had in him when he pulled Mitch out.”

“We do need more crew,” John said, earning himself an elbow in the gut from Naz. “Oaths?”

“Willing to swear.”

“Is he read in on the, ah, other thing?”

Willy looked between them. “Is this about Mitch being a secret prince?”

“This is the worst-kept secret in the entire galaxy,” Naz groused. “Why are you all still on my ship? You’re all the absolute worst.”

“You love us,” Mitch crooned. “Hey, Willy, want to come see my ‘ponics sector?”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**SPACETIME: DUETERA TO SYKKIN**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Willy’s presence on the Hiraeth wasn't something that Naz wholly trusted, but if Auston vouched for him that was all Naz could really ask for at this point.

Willy had been willing to hand over all technology on his person and submit to a full search. From Enzo’s furious threats over the broadband radio scanner, Willy had burned that particular bridge but good.

It was good to have someone new onboard. Willy was an old hand at piloting, it seemed, having picked it up from both his parents and the scores of ships he’d flown on as passenger and crew. The Nylanders were a family Naz knew of, he’d realized later: one of Naz’s contacts Andre Burakovsky of the _ RSS J.W. DENVER _ had lived with the Nylanders for a time, as had Nicklas Backstrom of the _ Justita Omnibus. _

It also didn’t shock Naz that Willy brought levity to the _Hiraeth._ Mitch was a cheerful sort, but he’d always been reserved to a degree about his past. Auston and John were both inclined to reservation. Willy seemed to have much more of an attitude in the vein of ‘_whatever will be will be._’

It was a mark to Willy’s credit that he accepted their plan with barely a blink, and that he had more questions about the logistics than comments about how impossible it would be.

“I do want to send a file to my brother,” he said, once they’d gone over the necessary details. “I have information I collected on the _Sabre _and the _Lalli,_ and my brother knows if I was unable to complete the work he’d get a data dump. He won’t believe I’m gone unless he gets that data dump.”

Naz frowned. “Does it have to be a handover?”

Willy shook his head. “Dead drop. You can read it, scan it, whatever you want to do, but I have to send it along if you want to fake my death alongside yours.”

John eyed him. “You can’t mention us or Mitch.”

“It would be weird if I included that,” Willy said. “It’s all information on Enzo, Eichel, and Hainsey, and lots of info on Melnyk. We’re working on who they all report to, but--you know.”

Naz did know. The Stellanautical Conglomerate of Ships and Sailors was technically ruled by committee, but in practice, it was well known that someone was pulling the strings behind the scenes. Willy would not be the first attempting to untangle the web of influence affecting almost all ‘Naut ships, legitimate business or otherwise.

“We can figure that out,” he said in reply and saw a relieved smile spread across Willy’s face.

The remaining days left on the _Hiraeth _were an odd mix of celebration and grief, of suspicion and elation. Their situation was absurd, and there was only so much preparing they could do before they had to pull off their stunt; all too soon it was the day before their rendezvous with the _ Margaret Rejoice,_ and the destruction of the Hiraeth was imminent.

The _Hiraeth,_ for all that she was a hunted and doomed vessel, felt livelier than it had in a while. Naz wasn’t sure if he wanted to attribute the liveliness to the sounds of Mitch and Willy trying to teach Auston some sort of game in the nearly-empty cargo hold, or John humming in the kitchen as he made something to eat with the last of the fresh ingredients. 

Or maybe, for all that Naz didn’t want to believe in things like fate or destiny, it was the _Hiraeth _herself giving the last of the love she had to give.

“We’ve had some adventures, haven’t we?” he murmured to the dials in the cockpit. “You, and me, and John.”

Naz had never flown the _Hiraeth _without John at his side, had inherited the name and the battered port windows and a shaky grav system when he’d bought the thing a decade ago. John had still been active duty, but when he had leave he’d helped Naz install new plating, helped him wire the grav generator more solidly, helped paint the whole thing. Naz had already loved John, but he knew it was for certain when John helped him rebuild the _Hiraeth._

“I wonder what my sisters will think,” he murmured, almost absentmindedly. “Or John’s mom.” He ran his hands over the console, feeling where the veneer had worn away and the dials he’d rarely used for manual landing, the story of what was important to the _Hiraeth _and her pilot. “We can’t tell them. I wonder if the Republic will tell them we died honorable deaths, or if they’ll be told we were traitors. Either way, there’s no going back.”

The Hiraeth didn’t respond because she was, after all, only a machine. For all the quirks she had developed and all the personality Naz ascribed to her, she was still a machine.

He sighed, listening to the metallic mesh of her motors, the whir of the air purifier, the hum of the heater. She was a good ship, filled with memories of people he loved.

His sisters had flown on the _Hiraeth _only twice, short trips between the language station where they’d grown up, and Terra Beta, where John and Naz had officially gotten married. They hadn’t liked being grounded, too used to the stars around them; two were linguists on the station, and one had trained as a doctor, all three serving on the same station they’d grown up on, though their parents had long moved on. They were a Republic family to the core. Naz had left to serve, and left again to fly the _Hiraeth,_ and was now leaving a third time for a permanent break from the Republic.

“I’m going to miss you,” Naz said.

John had proposed in the cargo bay; they’d met Mitch and gotten to know him in the crew quarters; Auston had called one of the fold-out cabins more of a home than Ladon was to him, these days. The _Hiraeth _had carried them across the universe more times than Naz knew how to count, and it hurt to know she wouldn’t be able to sail them across a galaxy again.

Mitch’s laughter curled in through the open hatch, a bright and valuable thing. The _Hiraeth _hummed around Naz, the lights blinking as sensors did their jobs, information scrolling across screens, and the ship ran as she was supposed to.

There wasn’t much that wouldn’t be destroyed with the Hiraeth. Jazzy, of course, along with a small collection of her toys. Naz and John’s wedding rings. A soft yellow stole and a green ribbon Mitch had retrieved from the trunks Bonnie Marner had brought aboard what seemed like lifetimes ago. An old fashioned metal coin that Auston kept in his pocket, and which he had rubbed smooth with gentle strokes of his fingers. Everything else--the ‘ponics, John’s beloved Poliyverni caf, the life they’d built up here--would soon be nothing but dust.

Naz sighed, running his fingers over the console, and forced himself to get up. He went to find John, who was just pulling a pot off the cooker.

“How are you doing?” John asked. He set the pot down on a trivet and powered down the cooker unit. “You’re holding up?”

“As well as I can.”

John came over and wrapped his arms around Naz. “I love you.”

“I know.” Naz leaned his head back, pressing a kiss to the stubbly skin of John’s jaw. “I love you too.”

“Did you want to go play with the boys? I think they’re playing a variant on hockey. The food can sit for a while.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Naz smiled at John. “You going to be on my team?”

“Always.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

“Are you ready?” John asked. “We can still call it off.”

“No, do it,” Naz said, gritting his teeth.

Mitch watched as John kissed the top of Naz’s head, and somewhere in the night, the _Hiraeth _crumpled in onto itself. The distress call they’d prerecorded deployed. There was a cacophony of voices that abruptly cut off; to anyone listening it would sound like something had gone very wrong with the ship’s mechanical systems. The explosive charges they had carefully overlooked on their routine bug sweep in Duetera detonated, lighting the ship’s oxygen supply on fire.

The Hiraeth would certainly not survive. No one would reasonably expect to find anything more than the tiniest scraps of metal and shredded flesh.

None of them were anywhere near the _Hiraeth._ That would have been suicide and insanity; instead, they were half a system away on board Morgan’s ship, the _ Margaret Rejoice._ The _Hiraeth _was in pieces not far from the border of Republic space, and the _ Margaret Rejoice _was not far from Sykkin. Morgan and Jake had collected them, and sent the _Hiraeth _off on autopilot, along with the noises that would indicate a sleeping crew. She’d flown herself for hours until they’d decided it was time.

“How long do you think it’ll take someone to notice?” Auston asked.

“If there were trackers on your ship the way you said there were, less than a day,” Morgan said. “If there weren’t, it could be a lot longer.” He shrugged loosely. “We’ll find something to do with ourselves for a little while; we won’t want to set course for Sykkin until we’re sure someone has found the bodies and your new identities have been completely confirmed.”

Thus began the weirdest day of Mitch’s life, and he was counting the day where he’d been hustled onto a strange spaceship by his foster mother, only to watch his homeworld burn. That had been a terrifying day; this was just a bizarre one.

Morgan and Jake had a broad collection of low-tech games: a few made of paper and metal, and a few that were variants on card games Mitch had learned from Auston and Naz. They sat around a table, dealing out hands of cards and talking about determinedly light-hearted topics. In the background, they listened for a ping containing the _ Hiraeth _’s name. Naz disappeared periodically disappeared to check in on Jazzy, who was contained to Naz and John’s cabin so as not to conflict with Jake and Morgan’s dog, Maggie.

“I still don’t understand your hangup about animal protein,” Mo said to Naz, who was picking at a snack bowl of crispbread. “You’ll eat lab meat no problem.”

“I grew up on an orbiting station,” Naz shot back. “Where the hell were we going to keep a cow? Animal flesh has just never appealed when you can get nutrients without killing something.”

Mitch, who had grown up on a diet very heavy in animal by-products but very little animal flesh, was about to chip in when an alert cheeped, a bright three-tone noise. Mo held up a hand and they all hushed.

Mitch didn’t understand the language that was being spoken over the comms--it was absolutely not Common, or any of the Sykkian languages, for that matter--but with the way Morgan rolled his eyes he figured Mo definitely did understand.

“The _Hiraeth _has been reported missing,” Jake translated when the ping faded away. “They’ve noticed you were more than a day late arriving at your port of call. They’re about to send out a search party, and it’s definitely perked up some Republic ears. I’m sure there are all kinds of alerts on your names.”

“For sure,” John said. “And the _ Hiraeth _ for certain.”

“Another round of cards?” Auston suggested.

With nothing else to do, Mitch dealt out another hand of cards.

They hadn’t expected a quick discovery of the _Hiraeth,_ but three days was an uncomfortably long wait even with as much planning as they’d done. The _ Margaret Rejoice _was much smaller than the _Hiraeth,_ and it was busier than it usually was; there was an amount of discomfort radiating from Jake that came from sharing the small quarters with so many other people.

Mitch spent a lot of the wait in the mechanics’ bay with Morgan, fixing things that had needed an extra set of hands to work on.

“Jake is wonderful at a lot of things,” Morgan said wryly, as they worked on rewiring a section of lighting. “But he doesn’t exactly have an inclination for mechanics. He’s much better at the intangibles of running the ship, but the hardware is not in his wheelhouse.”

Auston and Jake were both asleep, their varied wakecycles misaligning with Mitch and Morgan’s. Somewhere on the ship, John and Naz were entertaining themselves with Morgan’s extensive holovid collection. Willy was reading something across the mechanic’s bay, sprawled out inelegantly and listening to something blaring through a headset.

“I’m glad I could help,” Mitch said quietly, holding the wires steady as Morgan secured them with clasps. “I’m sorry we’re causing all this trouble for you and Jake.”

“It’s not trouble,” Morgan chided. “It’s the Republic being the Republic, and the ‘Nauts being the ‘Nauts.”

There was a chime, and Morgan paused. “Hold on, they just mentioned the _ Hiraeth _.”

Over the completely illegal comm-scanner Morgan had in the mechanics’ bay, there was a flurry of words Mitch didn’t recognize, and a smattering of names that Mitch did recognize.

“They found the _Hiraeth,_” Morgan translated and listened a minute longer. “They’re suspicious, but not surprised. It helps that the ship is about where they thought it would be.” Morgan shrugged and picked up his welder again.

“That’s it?” Mitch murmured, as Kessel and Knight began rattling off the _Hiraeth’s _registry number.

“That’s it,” Morgan said. “They won’t have any reason to believe you weren’t on that ship. Congratulations, you’re all dead. Jake is keeping an eye on your records to see when they officially file the death certificates.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

It was another couple of days before they felt safe enough to move on towards Sykkin. The Republic moved slowly, but they did put a little speed on when they were trying to hide the evidence of an extermination order. Jake kept watch on the official Republic public database, until eventually:

“Congrats,” Jake said, coming up from the lower decks of the ship. “Death certificates have been filed for everyone assumed to be on the _Hiraeth._ We are an entire ship of corpses.”

“Zombie ship,” Willy said cheerfully, and for whatever reason, that was what broke the weird mood filling the _Margaret Rejoice_.

“Another hand?” John asked, gesturing at the round of cards they’d left lying on the table.

“Let me set the autopilot for Sykkin,” Mo said. “And then I’m in.”

Naz excused himself, claiming tiredness; everyone could see he was more emotional than exhausted, but no one went after him, not even John.

“Sometimes he needs a moment to himself,” John said quietly to Mitch when Mitch gave him a puzzled look. “I’ll follow him after a round or two, but he needs a moment. It’s a lot emotionally.”

John did eventually follow Naz, leaving behind the card game. He slipped out of the room, knowing he'd find Naz in the bunk they were sharing.

Naz was sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to his chest and staring out the porthole, watching the slowly spinning planet beneath them. Jazzy was licking his wrist, rubbing her head against his leg.

John sat next to him and pulled Naz into his side. He gently rubbed Naz’s side in long, unceasing movements, and Naz tucked his face into John's shirt collar. He felt rather than saw Jazzy lie herself down, a staid presence.

Naz shuddered, heaving out a sob, tears soaking into John's shirt. John, despite himself, felt his own tears well up, and the two of them cried together for the loss of the Hiraeth and the life they'd just utterly decimated, the family they could never see again.

John didn't know how long they cried, grieving over all the things that could have been. What he did know was that slowly the tears ebbed, and Naz still clung to him, and that if nothing else, he still had Naz.

“I love you,” he murmured, knowing Naz could hear him. In response, Naz tightened his grip momentarily, a deeper embrace, and they stayed there as time kept ticking on.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**PORT: MELBIA, SYKKIN**

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Willy and Auston greeted them at the port in Melbia, both looking tired but cheerful. They’d gone with Jake and Mo to a ship resale lot, having tracked down a promising lead. Naz had stayed on Sykkin--under their new backstory, he and John both had a Sykkin citizenship exam to study for.

“I don’t get why he couldn’t have just given us the naturalized citizenship already,” Naz grumbled when Mitch had taken to quizzing them on Sykkin civic procedure at all hours.

“It’s more realistic this way,” John reminded him. “And we’ll have the ship and citizenship soon enough.”

“Hm,” Naz grumbled. They were walking around the main Melbian spaceport, Mitch leading the way and chattering brightly. In one of the bays would be their new ship, with Willy and Auston waiting out on the loading dock.

Auston was the first to spot them, waving them over to a ship that had clearly seen better days.

“We got her for a song,” Willy reported, once they were all in earshot. “She’s not the best ship going at the moment, but give her a little love and care, and she’ll fly like a dream. Otomos are the best fixer-uppers. She’ll run forever.”

“Thanks, Wills,” Naz said gruffly. He was still dealing with the loss of the _ Hiraeth, _but he was also clearly excited to see this new ship of his. “You filed the paperwork and everything?”

“All registered under the proper identities and everything,” Auston confirmed. “The good ship _ Trouvaille Célébrée, _registered to upstanding Sykkin citizens with strong interstellar trade connections. The entire Qaderi family are quite private, you understand, but they're quite entrepreneurial, and their adopted son is a skilled mechanic. They’ve decided to embark on a voyage, and have hired on a pair of crew to accompany them.”

“You’ve been enjoying this acting thing, haven’t you?” John said dryly. “Did you have fun?”

“Oh, the _most_ fun,” Willy said. “Come on, you want to come see her?”

The new ship looked a lot like the _Hiraeth,_ only a little larger. Mitch said as much when he got a closer look.

“Well, it is a Tierran ship design,” John said, clapping his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Otomos look a lot like Chevvys.”

Naz decided to change the subject before John, Willy, and Mitch got into a long discussion about Tierran ship design. If he was lucky they might only talk shop for a few hours before they could actually get some work done.

“We’ll need to hit the markets and get a lot of the furnishings we’ll need,” he said. “She’s pretty bare-bones at the moment. We’ll be in drydock a month at least getting her to a good standard. The _ Trouvaille _needs some help.”

“Why the _ Trouvaille Célébrée? _” Mitch asked, stumbling a little on the unfamiliar pronunciation. “That's a weird name.”

“Well, one, it wasn't taken by any ship registered out of Sykkin,” Naz said. “So that was one factor. I considered the _Alsuhail,_ but that was taken. The other reason is that it's a good word we don't use a lot--it's something good discovered by chance.”

“I always meant to ask,” Auston said. “Why the _Hiraeth?_ It’s not Common. Is it--whatever you grew up speaking. English?”

“No, it’s another Tierran language,” Naz said. “And it doesn’t matter much now.”

“It came with the ship,” John said. “And when we were fixing it up we thought we’d have changed it once the ship was fixed, but by the time we were ready to file the updated paperwork we couldn’t think of any name for her but the _ Hiraeth. _”

“There’s not a whole lot of ships out there with a single name,” Auston mused. “I guess it made her pretty distinct.”

“Well,” Naz said with forced cheeriness. “With any luck, the _ Trouvaille _will be quite unremarkable.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

“Is this weird?” Mitch asked, looking at what was supposed to be his tomb. “I feel like this is weird. It’s definitely weird.”

“Could be weirder,” Auston said. “Probably.”

Mitch gave him a deadpan look. “Please, tell me how this could be weirder.”

The Royal Tombs of Sykkin weren’t in Melbia; instead, it was four hours outside the capital. There was no mag-lev, which Mitch had grumbled about at length, but instead, short-distance air travel. John had thoroughly enjoyed interrogating Mitch about the mechanics of it--either that, or he’d been trying to distract Mitch from where they were going.

The _Trouvaille _was undergoing a deep clean before they could really get to work on her, so Naz had announced they were all taking a day trip while the harsher fumes aired out. Mitch had suggested a visit to the Starfall Chasm. Only Naz had seemed to know what that meant, and then Mitch had to justify why he wanted to go see his own gravesite.

“I mean, I don’t think it’s weird to visit your family’s memorials,” Auston said.

Mitch shrugged, peering over the clumps of tourists to look at his own Tomb.

The Royal Tombs held no bodies; Sykkin culture held no value in the decomposing organic matter that was a corpse. Instead, there were the things that His Highness Prince Mitchell of Sykkin had valued in life.

“Are you going to stay on Sykkin?” Auston asked.

Mitch shook his head. “No. I mean, I’m still a Sykkian citizen. Or, a Sykkian citizen again. However you want to phrase that. But I’m going to travel with the _Trouvaille,_ and when I’m called to submit my blood at Starsrise, I will. Naz and John will too. If I’m picked, I guess that’s what was meant to happen. But if I’m not, I was always meant for the life I have now.”

“You don’t regret it?”

Mitch snorted. “I regret a lot of things, but regret doesn’t change anything. My parents are still dead. I doubt Christopher is alive, and if he is he’s hiding as well as I am. My extended House, they have no reason to look for me, and there’s nothing I can do about any of it. But life on the _Trouvaille,_ with Naz and John, and you and Willy--that’s a life I can be content with. I don’t regret that.”

Auston looked down. “I don’t think I’ll be coming along on the _ Trouvaille_.”

Mitch stilled. “Oh. I guess--I just thought you wanted to stay.”

“I do,” Auston said. “But I think I need to know more about what happened to my sister on Ladon. Knowing what the Republic did to Sykkin--I don’t know if I trust what I was told about Ladon’s disasters.”

“I’m sure John and Naz would help you, if you asked.”

“I know they would, but I think it’s something I need to do on my own.”

“Will you come back?”

“I hope so,” Auston said. “I mean, I have no reason not to. In fact, I think I have a pretty convincing reason to come back.”

“John’s cooking,” Mitch joked.

“No, I mean--I’m not sure how you’re supposed to do it here on Sykkin, but--be my boyfriend?”

“Well,” Mitch said. “Technically we’d have to decide who was marrying into whose House and who was marrying out, but I’m pretty sure you’d marry in on account of, y’know, everything.”

“And because I like your family anyhow.”

Mitch smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You’d have to accept Naz as your _lissi,_ and agree you will shoulder care if you are called to do so for the House.”

“Sounds pretty easy so far.”

“And then,” Mitch said. “Once we’d done all that, we’d swear.”

“How do we do that?”

Mitch held out his hand and shook Auston’s hand briefly. “Just like that.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You two are gross,” Willy informed them, startling Mitch and causing Auston to sigh in deep resignation. “The monument to your parents is pretty crowded if you wanted to go by now,” he added.

Mitch looked over, to where his mother’s tomb held her books, a pot of yellow paint, holographic images of a young Mitch and a young Chris playing together.

“I think I’m okay,” he said. Through the crowds, he thought he glimpsed a familiar face---Bonnie, who had vanished from the records, who, for all the digging anyone could do, seemed to have never existed.

But Bonnie was not particularly distinct in her appearance, and the crowd shifted, and whatever connection might have been was gone.

“You ready to head home, then?” Willy asked. “I think John and Naz are about finished up with their tour.”

Mitch turned and indeed saw John and Naz walking towards them. To the side, Auston was haloed in sunlight.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Let’s go.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅


	7. GLOSSARY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the supplementary glossary for “think with your head (not that thing in your chest” and does, to that end, contain some degree of spoilers. I would highly recommend reading the fic first as this will just be a random list of words without it, but you do you, I guess? In theory this should be alphabetized by category but any remaining mistakes are mine.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅  
**CAST**   
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**Alexander Nylander**: former crew member of the _Golden Sabre_

  * Brother of William Nylander
  * Currently working on a circulating language station

**Amanda Kessel**: assassin and wet work agent working for the Republic of United Systems

****Auston Matthews**: **A Republic Special Forces Agent swept up into the Hiraeth's complicated journey across the stars.

  * Full Title: Republic Special Forces Agent Auston Matthews
  * Born on: Ladon
  * Speaks: Common, Drakkan

****Bonnie Marner**: **a Sykkin engineer who senses danger is rising on Sykkin and makes the choice to get her son off-world.

  * Mother of Mitch Marner
  * Mechanical Engineer
  * Citizen of Sykkin

****Freddie Andersen****: a Republic Speical Forces Agent with more loyalty to his friends than his government.

  * Full Title: Special Forces Agent Frederik Andersen
  * Commchip connection: +0.2 (110) 31311 9920 (33)

**Isobel**: Taabi citizen who travels on the _Hiraeth_

**Jake Gardiner**: co-pilot and crew member of the_ Margaret Rejoice_

  * Skilled skimmer
  * Married to Morgan Rielly

****Jasmine Kadri: ****The Hiraeth ship cat

****John Tavares**: **co-pilot of the Hiraeth

  * Full Title: Special Forces Agent John Tavares
  * Born on Tierra Beta
  * Speaks: Common, Ts’ybe, Polish

****Mitch Marner: ****the prince of Sykkin, sent abroad to protect his life and his identity.

  * Full Title: His Royal Highness Prince Mitchell of Sykkin
  * Born in Melbia, Sykkin
  * Speaks: Common, Melbianish, Nisardi

****Morgan Rielly: ****Pilot and captain of the _Margaret Rejoice_

** **Natalie Spooner** **

**Nazem Kadri**: captain of the ship Hiraeth

  * Full Title: United Systems Captain Nazem Kadri
  * Born on Circulating Language Station 169B, English Sector, Sol Prime System
  * Speaks: Common, English, Arabic
  * Married to John Tavares (under Republic Law, license registered to Tierra Beta)

****Tyler Ennis****: a 'Naut captain engaged in trade and determined to advance his crew's fortunes.

**Tymm**: Taabi citizen who travels on the Hiraeth

****William Nylander**:** a pilot who hides his affiliation as a matter of course 

****Zach Hyman****: a Taabi academic helping others rebel against the Republic.

  * **+2.9 (117) 51678 1515 **(Z. Hyman)

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅  
**LOCATIONS**   
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

**Anioturn**: miscellaneous moon

**Avyline**: ice planet

  * **Poyivrni**: society on Avyline famous for their dark blue caffeinated beverage
  * Auston’s family lives here following the Ladon Catastrophes
  * Citizens are known as “Avylinian”

** **Brmmi:** **

**Caxi**: planet of indeterminate variety and little plot relevance

**Delrabi**: miscellaneous planet

**Duetera**: planet with a low level of regard to the Republic, and highly associated with the ‘Nauts

  * Main cities: **Rêvasserie**, **Clarté **(capital)
  * Known for creating incredibly believable false identities

****Ladon**: **planet with a primarily nitrogen-heavy atmosphere, more land-based than Earth (think Mars) with 1.3 Terra Prime gravity; home to the Drakkan branch of humanity

  * Citizens are known as “Drakkan”
  * Home planet of _Auston Matthews_

****Luxis**: **mining planet known for diamonds/carbon

**Persephone**: planet largely known for agriculture and the expansive black market there 

  * Main cities: **Hydpo **(capital)

****Robruv**: **miscellaneous planet

****Sykkin**: **an independent planet with a rich cultural history and a complex monarchy

  * Main cities: **Melbia **(capital), **Canibrya**
  * Roughly .82 gravity of Terra Prime
  * Citizens are known as “Sykkians”
  * Home planet of _Mitchell Marner_

**Taabi**

  * Main cities: **Vlvil **(capital), **Rysm**
  * Main languages: Common, Ts’ybe, (language 3), (language 4)
  * Citizens are known as “Taabi”
  * Home planet of Isobel and Tymm
  * Residence planet of _Zachary Hyman, William Nylander_, and _Tyler Ennis_

****Terra Prime**: **the original human planet

  * Main cities: **London**,** Los Angeles, Beijing, Sao Paolo**
  * Citizens are known as “Tierran”
  * Primarily known for agriculture and as an archeological destination

****Terra Beta**: the second human planet**

  * Main cities: **Kaluliky**
  * Known as a library planet

** **Toki** **

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅  
**ORGANIZATIONS**   
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

****The Republic of United Systems**: **a galactic government in power for roughly 250 standard years; in control of most “civilized” systems and planets

**The****** Stellanautical Conglomeration of Ships and Sailors:**** an association of ships and pilots who formally engage in galactic trade and informally run a mafia-like operation, familiarly known as the 'Nauts  


⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅  
**SHIPS**   
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

** **Bytown Packet** **

  * Helmed by Captain D.J. Smith
  * Familiarly known as the _Bytown_
  * Known crew: Connor Brown
  * Known former crew: _Tyler Ennis_

** **Carlton Acer** **

  * Helmed by Captain M. Babcock
  * Familiarly known as the Carlton

** **Emperor Allegheny** **

  * Helmed by Captain S.P. Crosby, First Mate E. Malkin
  * Familiarly known as the _Emperor_

** **Freeborn** **

  * Helmed by Captain J. Benn, First Mate T. Seguin

** **Geneviève Escalibor** **

  * Helmed by Captain M.A. Fleury,
  * Familiarly known as the _Escalibor_

** **Golden Sabre** **

  * A Otomo-make crew ship of over 150 people, plus passengers.
  * Helmed by Captain J. Eichel, First Mate M. Johanssen, Quartermaster J. McCabe.
  * Familiarly known as the _Sabre_
  * Known crew: 
  * Known former crew: _Tyler Ennis, William Nylander, Alex Nylander_, and _Michelle Nylander_.
  * Allied to the Stellanautical Conglomerate of Ships and Sailors

** **Hiraeth** **

  * A Chevrolet-make transport class ship owned by _Nazem Kadri_ and _John Tavares_.
  * 4 crew, 14 passengers maximum capacity
  * Helmed by Captain N. Kadri, First Mate J. Tavares
  * Independent trade vessel registered under the Republic of United Systems
  * Known current crew: _Mitch Marner (mechanic)_, _Auston Matthews (handler),_ _William Nylander (pilot)_

** **Justita Omnibus** **

  * Helmed by Captain A. Ovechkin, First Mate N. Backstrom
  * Familiarly known as the _Justita_

** **Lady Constitution** **

  * Helmed by Captain C. Giroux
  * Familiarly known as the _Lady_

** **Margaret Rejoice** **

  * A Lopyr-make private travel ship owned by Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner.
  * 2 crew, 8 passenger max capacity.
  * Familiarly known as the _Margaret_
  * No known alliance

** **Manada** **

  * Helmed by Captain O.E. Larson
  * Known crew: Lawson Crouse, Nick Merkley
  * Known former crew: Dylan Strome
  * Allied with the Republic of United Systems

** **Panthera Tigris** **

** **RSS JW Denver** **

  * A Lopyr-make crew ship of over 150 people, plus passengers.
  * Helmed by Captain G. Landeskog
  * Familiarly known as the _Denver_
  * Known crew: 
  * Known former crew: 

** **Thunderbolt** **

  * A Raorn-make crew ship of over 150 people, plus passengers.
  * Helmed by
  * Known crew: 
  * Known former crew: 

** **Trouvaille Célébrée** **

  * A Otomo-make transport class ship owned by Nazem and John Qadri
  * 6 crew, 16 passengers maximum capacity
  * Familiarly known as the _Trouvaille_
  * Known crew: J.M. Qadri, W.Alteus, A. Taylour

****Ursa Arctos Stellari****

****Wild Eye****

  * A Lopyr-make crew ship of over 150 people, plus passengers.
  * Helmed by the
  * Known crew: 
  * Known former crew: _Tyler Ennis_. 

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅  
**GLOSSARY**   
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

  * **Abacaxi**: Sykkian fruit; similar to a grapefruit.
  * **Book of Blood**: a highly advanced and cryptic nanotech that chooses the ruler of the planet Sykkin through an indecipherable and ancient algorithm.
  * **Criari**: a warm custardy sweet popular in Rysm, Taabi.
  * **Evenmeal**: the large meal of the ship’s working “day”, eaten at approximately the midpoint of waking hours.
  * **Firryah**: honorific roughly equivalent to ma’am or sir; no gender connotations; Sykkian in origin
  * **Hydroponics (‘Ponics)**: the section of a spacebound craft that houses greens and other growing organic matter; primarily useful for crew morale as opposed to technological reasons.
  * **Mornmeal**: the first meal of any waking day.
  * **Plaesia**: mineral used in making and maintaining electronics; roughly equivalent to silicon
  * **Standard Unit** (weight): 1.39 kilograms, or 5.8 liters, depending if solid or liquid measure
  * **Recycler**: mechanical air purifier used in most ships for oxygen-based bipedals.
  * ****The Royal Tombs of Sykkin: ****Houses the deceased royal lines, and stores the vials of blood for the Book of Blood to choose from
  * **Sykkin House System**:
    * An individual is a member of a given House--a House is a collection of people with a lissi, or an individual whose primary responsibility is to look out for the wellbeing of those connected to them. DNA/blood not the sole determinant of a House, but it is a starting place for a lot of people.
    * Blue paint/dye/ribbon: reserved for those not linked to a house/those on their own. It essentially marks someone who has undergone a great tragedy to have lost everyone who cares for them. Or, it denotates a total foreigner to the culture--someone who lives within the culture but has no deep links to it.
    * Green paint/dye/ribbon: someone who is married to another individual/deeply committed to a cause linked to their House.
    * Yellow paint/dye/ribbon: denotates the _lissi_ or _linsi_ of a house and their role as a caretaker. People in caretaker positions (teachers, nurses, etc) often wear yellow trim on their clothing but _never _solid yellow.
    * Red paint/dye/ribbon: rebel status--those who don’t want their status to be known.
  * **Wakecycle**: the biorhythm adopted by any individual in space without a planet’s natural light cycle to guide them.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic. This fic. This fic was supposed to end approximately 20,000 words shorter than it actually did. It started out as an idea with a different cast of characters, who did not fit in the roles I was putting them in; until suddenly, they clicked into place and the Hiraeth exploded into being. Characters who were supposed to be important weren’t; characters who weren’t supposed to be important suddenly were.
> 
> If you want to play in the verse that grew up around the Hiraeth, please do! Give me a heads up, though. This is also blanket permission for art and podfic; do check in with the HBB mods for an appropriate time frame on permissions, though.
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at satellitesandfallingstars, or PM me for my discord handle.


End file.
